What the Bleep Do We Know!? (2004)

 

Directors: William Arntz, Betsy Chasse and Mark Vicente

Screenplay: William Arntz, Matthew Hoffman, Betsy Chasse and Mark Vicente

Cast: Marlee Matlin as Amanda; Elaine Hendrix as Jennifer; Barry Newman as Frank; Robert Bailey Jr. as Reggie; John Ross Bowie as Elliot; Armin Shimerman as Man; Robert Blanche as Bob; Larry Brandenburg as Bruno

An Abstract Candidate

 

I'll stick my ass in the cocktail sauce if I please...

Today we have a contentious production to review, and I will immediately present the fact that I had to completely jettison my original review because, in truth, the source of the film is a deeply problematic one. Enough was discovered to have a complete scorched earth policy involved for the original notes and start from scratch, using the fragments from the first text which was relevant still here in a newer light. I will still keep the controversial opinion I had originally started this film with - that I take neither side of the argument between New Age beliefs and their sceptics. The issue of pseudoscience is one that has become more contentious over the years, said as someone who openly admits to having a spiritual inkling and even owns tarot cards, but also believes in common sense. This is a common sense that we should use what is graspable in tools for things like medicine and building bridges, not magic. As someone interested in mysticism and concepts like alchemy, the actual version of it as a spiritual belief, even magic itself as a concept for me is not a form you can just use to complete a task like heal a person, let alone ask the question of whether it actually exists. The issue with this documentary, having to take a sharp left turn in the review from its original form, is not its beliefs of the mind being literally able to bend reality as is on the surface of the film and its main message. That on the surface is confused and what I turned off quickly in this curious form of New Age documentary-fiction hybrid as I watched it.  That, and debating it is the lesser concerning elephant in the room here.

About single and group consciousness being able to influence the world, and the divisive referencing to quantum physics in context to this, the film includes interviews and tried at being serious as a key to enlighten. Dismissing this for me for a whole review would be shooting fish in a barrel and a waste of paper, merely opinion, and I still will include how sadly our black-and-white way of dealing with subjects like this has its problems. The "kill-it-with-fire" subtle way does not help discuss these opinions, scrutinise them, and can actually push more people to pseudoscientific beliefs. It is also naive, as from the printed press onwards, each technology over centuries and form of communication allows many voices to be heard, including those of cults who existed long into human society's existence, who will still exist regardless if one dies from its press. Far more concerning is that the source of this film is deeply suspicious and problematic regardless of these surface beliefs.

The film's directors and creators are part of the Ramtha's School of Enlightenment. The school has been called a religious cult and is tied to one of the figures who are interviewed within the film, a woman named J. Z. Knight who founded the school in 1988. Reading up on the school and background on this film has, frankly, caused me to jettison what I had originally penned because I did not want to now have a softer view of the production I originally had. That opening statement, of taking neither side of the argument, is entirely to do with New Age and pseudoscience against their sceptics, not with a film with a questiomable background, which does need to be considered with a bitter taste in the mouth now writing this. Knight's school has been accused of cult-like tendencies, as her own opinions have spun off into both anti-gay and anti-Jewish sentiments, among other controversial views¹, alongside the paradox of someone who is a religious leader. She is a woman who claimed to channel a 35,000-year-old Lemurian warrior spirit named Ramtha, yet sued a woman in Berlin named Judith Ravell who claimed to also be channelling Ramtha, taking her to court alongside Whitewind Weaver, another woman who imparted Ramtha's teachings in her own event and Knight won $10,000 in 2008 from in a law suit¹.

Though this review was going to be that of finding the accidental cult film with its curious creative choices, I have to drastically change my opinion on a drop of dime, all quickly because "cult" literally has to be raised as deeply unsavoury things ringing my alarm bells. This will be a very negative view of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment which for a follower will be a bias, me their enemy if they ever bother finding this, but only because these wary alarm bells ring with a severity. The New Age film I read of, in a dismissive tiny box of a review in Total Film magazine, as this managed to get a British theatrical release in the day, became a lot of morally contentious just in the proofreading stage of the original review. Having your students do things as drink lye as they have been accused of, a strongly alkaline solution, especially of potassium hydroxide, a substance used for washing or cleansing, in a concoction with Dead Sea water is enough to raise concerns². My own spiritual beliefs are also that any organisation requiring large sums of money from their students for teaching should always be of suspect even if I have a bias inherently in this opinion.

The problems now raised with this film's existence however cannot undercut the idea that came in the original review, and has become more loaded. Sadly, for this amateur philosopher, the inherent irrational nature of human society, that treats individual human life as disposal in illogical social structures, causes people to feel crushed and desperate. Modern secular society cannot help either as even the mottos of this time, to live life to the fullest, and to accept humanity's smallness to the power of nature and the cosmos, cannot get past the illogical nature of society, which undercuts this, or that these messages are now even being shilled to us in advertising to sell Diet Coke or insurance. What the Bleep Do We Know, if you came to this without the sinister back-story to its creation, feels like if David O Russell's I Heart Huckabees (2004) managed to be weirder, and was stuck trying to be serious as an inspiration document too, one should be viewed as vague even for the New Age inclined of viewer, a production made in a climate where people are desperate for a solution for their lives.

I still want to morbidly prod the film regardless of the unsavoury content, and a factor to consider was that, better known and more controversial, another film released as well in 2004 was Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which revealed a huge religious audience in cinema. Gibson's was a rare case, an ultra high budget film he managed to be made with his clout, but digital technology and the likes of the internet have been able to spread the word of mouth for alternative voices, even with problematic opinions. They have been able to be more readily available in cinema, now moving onto the internet and social media over the decades onwards. A film like What the Beep... is also influenced by what was clearly the air of the time, the post-Millennium fear of the new century, the September 11th 2001 terrorist attack in New York City, and the timeless issue of purpose in a world which treats a normal person, if they have not privilege or wealth, as a bystander and a cog only and nothing more.

The film itself presents itself with an easy to grasp concern, one which touches into real universal concerns that, insidiously or not, can grab a person because they are uncomfortable real especially in their banality. Marlee Matlin plays Amanda, a female photographer going through an existential crisis. Not only is she on anxiety medication, but she has the scars from a marriage ending, the husband cheating on her, and least some religious hang-ups, which get to some of the more fascinating but also now problematic aspects of the interviews. These are all part of the accidental and loaded aspects of the film trying to offer a solution to the problem of modern human society. Also of note is that, of all things, the film which may have been made by a deeply problematic religious sect still manages to have far more progressive casting than a film from sensible minded people decades on, as Amanda is played by Marlee Matlin. The first deaf actress to win an Academy Award for Children of a Lesser God (1986), and is a prolific television actress with theatrical roles in-between to this day, her disability is never referred, merely a figure who lip reads and uses sign language, and is treated as everyone else, again making the possible cult cult film inexplicably more progressive than films without its contentious back story years onwards. This film, as my time with the notorious Atlas Shrugged adaptations between 2011 to 2014 revealed, does raise the uncomfortable issue of how actors end up in these films, whether for work or personal interest, with deeply problematic concerns to raise, here as well even behind the camera. Truly we the viewers have ourselves been naive to acting being a job you do as a career, even on contentious productions, when Amanda slightly lecherous photography boss is Barry Newman, the lead from the cult car film Vanishing Point (1971), or that the strange man who keeps unsubtly telling Amanda "Makes you wonder, doesn't it?", appearing out of nowhere, is Armin Shimerman, who sci-fi fans may recognise as Quark from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-9).

The references to I Heart Huckabees is appropriate, a strange film from David O. Russell, funded by 20th Century Fox of all people before Mickey Mouse got them. It was an existential comedy about finding purpose, which could only have been made in this period whilst still being relevant in themes today. What the Beep... feels a cousin to it, only one with the albatrosses of deeply problematic figures involved, in the accusations levelled against them, and that its desire to be upfront as an enlightenment tool is only interesting for the things its text accidentally reveal. The film's newly found sinister edges are sided with how strange the film also is, trying for a wholesome and playful journey, but by way of a curious Alice in New Age land scenario, a drama-comedy where Amanda slowly finds herself in a series of moments suddenly finding the cogs of the world malfunction. Already having seen multiple realities at once, the first is the basketball court which exists outside of time and space, Amanda encounters a young boy who, host of this time bending court, informs her of the malleability of dimension itself with the help of basketball. The contentious material, depending on the viewer, can be found in the film's fictional content itself, such as a later discovery, down in the subway, of exhibits where a Japanese scientist recorded water particles changing form depending on the blessing or dismissal they have been given. Again, I the author have no interest in discussing this, and I do not find this a copout either to say. Far more a concern now is considering how the film touches on real, uncomfortable concerns of what modern life can do to people, and how it bends itself to suit for an outside audience, one of the most prominent interviewees is with its contentious figurehead J. Z. Knight, the very stern and frankly exaggerated female figure who proclaims her opinions with an unbreakable opinion for this viewer's bias opinion, the figure who this stems from and we are clearly in a snippet of her mind for.

It wants to be playful, What the Beep Do We Know the curious existential ride for this character Amanda which is bright, as quirky as her artist roommate, a woman who paints by dancing on a sheet, though its opinions can all be boiled down to positive thinking literally changing reality, the depths now with more curious and alarming implications now. The film in how it is made is conventional, a lower budgeted indie film, but what it says is the greater concern. The religious discussion in the interviews were fascinating from the film's perspective, talking of how the idea of a personal God who demands from human beings becomes a burden, or that this deals with how we comfort ourselves in vices, something which when I get to the wedding sequence is going to be an odyssey in itself. But I dig, and I learn of how this has far more complexity, let alone with one of the prominent interviewees being Micheál Ledwith. A former monsignor in the Catholic Church, adviser to the pope, and president at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Ledwith resigned abruptly in 1994 after paedophilia allegations, settled out of court, and was defrocked by the Vatican in 2005, which in itself I do not take a side on, but in itself would be a concern for some readers and should be raised. J. Z. Knight, who has the most virulent views on the concept of God, present a really complex web that is her mind, dismissing the idea even of a God in our likeness though coming with the danger, as the leader of a religious group where she channels its guide, that she herself could become a cult of personality for those who left her church and/or have challenged her from an anti- Ramtha perspective. The irony is also not lost that co-director/co-writer Betsy Chasse also produced the evangelical teen comedy Extreme Days (2000), where Christianity meets extreme sports, which just adds more questions.

A film like this exists entirely because of the ennui and anxieties of the time, and they still exist even in the modern day, people trying to find a purpose in a bleak world where that seems hollow. As someone myself who feels most of the existential crisis is blameable on human society being built on irrational structures, I am not surprised that people come to work like this, a film where the interviewees, with their affirmative words, feel authoritarian with the positivity on show. Stranger as well as is, without the licensed music this film suddenly acquired for one sequences, the score is from Christopher Franke of Tangerine Dream, which is surreal in itself. His career post his work with Tangerine Dream for soundtracks is eclectic enough - even with one Japanese animated film, Tenchi the Movie: Tenchi Muyo in Love (1996), to his name³ - but his curious career lead to this. Providing a good score for the film, he yet is too good at his work, emphasising a pleasantness that draws a viewer to What the Beep..., the affirming nature to even its soundscape that helped this do so well at the North American box office in the day as much as other aspects of the movie. One learns of how to be wary of how visuals and audio cues in cinema can manipulated in examples like this, a soundtrack influence how a film can be digested, and is something to always be wary of, even if I have no malice against Franke. Perversely, I want this score separate as an original soundtrack release, a testament to its sound qualities.

The issues it touches on, including aging and the vices of the modern world, are common ones, and there is the sense of the film trying to deal with the banality of life, yet paradoxically. It has its key figure Knight proclaim that a personal God is absurd, and the film enforces human beings as small cogs of the world, but also suggests our malleability of existence is yet possible to the point we could control it all. Yes, it is confusing, and to be honest, if this had not still contained topics still dicey for the current day, this film's tone would end up as a cult film Something Weird Video would have in their catalogue as a WTF oddity. Throughout, aware that this material would enrage of a follow of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment, sharpening their knives, as an outsider with my own opinions, my own biases and perspective, this does feel peculiar with more issues that hesitate me now the accusations, even if unproven, are still there nonetheless. Were it not from the problematic nature of how the film was made, once the then-modern CGI effects start talking of ourselves on a molecular level, or how the brain works as its own addict, this becomes more a trip than a learning experience. Some of the interviewees are having their words distorted entirely and the film crosses a moral line as a result - David Albert, philosopher of physics and professor at Columbia University, spoke with outrage afterwards that his words were taken out of context entirely through the editing of his interview⁴ - but even this transgression is softened because the film is also unfocused and tonally off for this viewer, a potential audience decades on for the film's ideas. It is entirely unaware it could have been a better existential comedy than po-faced, and the wedding sequence is where this film, for all its alarming nature, just comes off as a bizarre cultural object I feel falls off the rails in a morbidly compelling way1.

Suddenly the film predates Inside Out (2015), the Pixar animated film depicting human emotions in anthropomorphic form, and to make the one controversial comment I will get people coming for me at my house for, even this film, possibly made by a religious cult, is less pretentious and bluntly honestly than even a film you have to bear in mind was made for children too. This still managers to be more bluntly honest of our ids being represented through the ugly and vulgar bacchanal at a wedding when, inside everyone's mind, an orgy of repressed ids made of multicoloured blob emotions take advantage of the alcohol and high strung emotions. The soundtrack suddenly has licensed music - Boston's More Than Feelin', The Trammps' Disco Inferno, Kernkraft 2000's Zombie Nation and Animotion's Obsession;  there are visual jokes of the bridesmaids in giant pear costumes; Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love is not only on the soundtrack but turns into a visual parody of the original music video, of Palmer being backed by female musicians in the background; and full blown lower budgeted animation for emotions like gluttony, which are neither pretty or emotionally sympathetic, is crammed into the viewer's eyes. By the time your emotions are symbolised by IV drips of coloured emotional liquids, included as dance props in a musical number set to dance remixed Polish polka music, we have stretched What the Beep Do We Know into a cult item in dire of need of reassessment as much as an actual cult item from a deeply problematic religious group if any of the accusations are true.

The film's legacy, including a re-cut version in 2006 called What the Bleep! Down the Rabbit Hole, does raise the fact that these works of contentious nature do not die if you mock them as pseudoscience, that they are parts of the complexity of human nature where we will still be drawn to even deeply problematic moral views. Voices of all opinions exist, and in cinema as digital filmmaker and more independent creators with their own beliefs have become more common, North American cinema alone has seen the likes of Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas (2014) to the films of right wing figure Dinesh D'Souza grow and appear. These alternative voices have gained footholds in North American cinema independently, and cinema is just another medium for these voices as when books were a new thing, something we have always had as a species. Voices, alternative medical ideas to conspiracy theories, are far older as concepts and will keep finding ways to enter public consciousness in new media, even deeply problematic and inhuman ones, and here we have a work with problematic spiritual issues raised against its creators whose ideas are vague for me. It instead is a cultural item worth talking of this way as rather than just through a hollow sceptical dismissal which does not ask why it exists. Its hippy dippy heart is more potentially poisonous, and yet this is probably the only time I can write a sentence about a movie involving wedding sequence with I.V. drip dance choreography. Both the lighter hearted and amused later comment, and the more serious concern of the former comment, needs to be scrutinised more than a dismissal, as a lot could be considered and learnt even in forcing an amateur like myself to have to rewrite a review, meant for fun as a hobby, at the eleventh hour for a more thought out and considered take.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Psychotronic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

 

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1) In trust that the statements are accurate to the material gathered for the Alternet article, a loaded title of Ramtha, New Age Cult Leader, Unleashes Drunken, Racist, Homophobic Rants to Large Following, published on June 06, 2014, and hopefully not a biased burial, I find only the phrase "that organic farmers have questionable hygiene" acceptable to publish here for every reader's sake. From what Knight has been referred to have said, none of the others are palatable for myself to have to have in the review even for reference.

2) Referred to in the Artvoice article published on June 9th 2019, called Shadow: Ramtha Cult Allegedly Recommended Its Students Drink Lye.

3) That animated film, a continuous of a huge franchise from the nineties, has the even more surreal touch of Christopher Franke writing its end theme with German punk/cult musician Nina Hagen of all people singing it. That is not even taking into consideration that his career before then even included Universal Soldier (1992) to the television franchise Babylon 5.

4) Referred to in the Popular Science article Cult Science, published on October 20th 2004 on this subject and with an obviously dismissive attitude to What the Bleep Do We Know, admittedly a tone which for me is the kind, for argument's sake, does represent the tone of language on this subject I would actively avoid even on a pseudoscience subject I have huge issues with.