What The Bleep Do We Know? It’s A Six-Star Movie!
Movies Sunday, November 14, 2004 . This is a SciScoop post by Ricky James
Huntsville, Alabama, where I live is a sort of hi-tech oasis in the middle of a religious redneck desert, effectively the buckle of the conservative Bible Belt. Here in northeast Alabama when the churches aren’t doing snake handling up on nearby Sand Mountain, they’re literally burning John Kerry signs they’ve stolen from yards. On the movie front, we had pre-sold church-block midnight showings of The Passion of The Christ starting on opening day, while I had to go visit my stepson in Birmingham to see Fahrenheit 911 because initially it wasn’t shown here in Huntsville at all in its opening weeks.
We in Huntsville do have a nice little counterculture weekly newspaper known as Valley Planet. In its most recent issue, the paper ran an interesting local review about a movie I’d never heard of called What The Bleep Do We Know? Somehow this quirky blend of Zen and quantum mechanics had miraculously made it to one of Huntsville’s second-string theaters as an indy art film. So I went.
Folks, don’t even finish reading the rest of this SciScoop article. Get up out of your chair right now, go to your car, drive to your local theater, and either see the next showing of What The Bleep Do We Know? or ask to see the manager and demand to know why they’re not running What The Bleep Do We Know? on multiple screens. This is a six-star movie on a five star scale that makes The Matrix look like an episode of Barney and Friends. To quote from Lucia Cape’s Valley Planet review linked above, “The Chicago Tribune described the film as ‘a PBS ‘Nova’ installment on crystal meth.” USA Today called it a user’s manual to The Matrix spreading across the country like a fad diet. The New York Times split its vote, saying it is “part perky educational film, part goofy New Age recruitment effort.”
As one whose primary interest is science, normally I’m turned off by goofy New Age recruitment efforts and this certainly is one – but an astoundingly educational, insightful and convincing one, even if I don’t buy off on the isolated parts about water drops or the Washington DC murder rate. I’ll go with The Oregonian film critic Marc Mohan’s take: “Overall, the film is about three-fourths intellectual substance and one-fourth hokum — not a bad ratio.” If the Methodists in Huntsville bothered to read Valley Planet (ha) and see this film (double ha!), they’d graduate from burning John Kerry signs to breaking into the projection booth at 3AM to swipe and burn the print of this film. Bleep is nothing more or less than the establishment of a new, totally convincing religion – one that embraces the many mysteries of science rather than condemning interest in them, one without a Savior save one’s self, one that does not demand belief in the reality of a static Deity as much as recognize that belief itself somehow creates dynamic reality on a quantum level.
I’m a convert. Go see this film. When The Bleep Can I Buy The DVD?
Previously: « How The Moon Could Save Us
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11 Responses to What The Bleep Do We Know? It’s A Six-Star Movie!
apsmith
November 14th, 2004 at 9:27 am
Hi Ricky – Huntsville is great – I’m visiting here for the first time (and had a chance to have some delicious local BBQ for lunch yesterday, with Ricky and sciscoop friends :-) Still haven’t seen the underground command bunker yet.
The reason I’m visiting was advertised pretty prominently on the latest Valley Planet cover – the fall NSS conference here in “Rocket City”. Not a huge event – mostly an excuse for the new National Space Society board of directors to get together and figure out how to keep the organization solvent. But we’ve actually had some fascinating talks on future space propulsion, some things the NASA Marshall center is up to, a visit to the Boeing Delta-IV plant, and some more which perhaps I’ll get a chance to post a story on here :-)
gypsysoul
November 14th, 2004 at 3:52 pm
Hey Dr. Smith,
Hope Huntsville and the BBQ lived up to expectations. You even got to see the SUN shine on the airport/cotton field/golf course complex on Sunday!
This trip: space conference. Next trip: snake handlers and Monte Sano State Park… and maybe even the BUNKER :-)
apsmith
November 14th, 2004 at 4:24 pm
Thanks for the lunch and tour! Maybe next time I come it’ll be to stay :-)
Actually, on the snake handlers, we had a funny moment at today’s conference lunch, when our youthful executive director was stirring the crowd with exhortations to go out and “evangelize” about the future of humanity in space, and one of the locals got up next and hailed him as “Brother Whitesides” :-) Maybe we all have that need to believe strongly in something, and go tell the world about it… Take care!
gypsysoul
November 14th, 2004 at 7:27 pm
the Bible Belt for nothing! I’m telling you, the spirit is contagious. After reading Bro. Rick’s review of the Bleep flick, I have been persuaded to spend the $8 and go see it. RJ may have given me a quantum God I can finally accept.
Drog
November 15th, 2004 at 11:26 am
The trailers look pretty interesting. Looks like I can’t see it in Ottawa until December 10, though. Aside from making grand statements about how quantum physics tells us that reality is much stranger than it appears, what was the gist of the movie? If it’s almost like a new religion, then what are its principle tenants?
calia
November 15th, 2004 at 11:36 am
While the Matrix series may present philosophical ideas in a manner that sensitive people feel more comfortable digesting, at the heart of it, we are actually talking about Gnosticism. In the course of Ricky’s explanation about this breakthrough type of movie, I surmised that he is probably talking about the same thing. And Gnosticism is nothing new, by the way.
“Gnosticism (from gnosis, the Greek word for knowledge) is an “umbrella word” for all sorts of occult philosophies. The early Gnostics sought salvation and supernatural power through esoteric knowledge — a secret gnosis, not just ordinary knowledge.” - Berit Kjos
Anonymous
November 15th, 2004 at 12:58 pm
I’m very very sad to hear that fellow Methodists are doing things like that…
I *voted* for John Kerry. *sigh*
Viva la evolution.
SEWilco
November 16th, 2004 at 10:57 am
A review of What the #$*! Do We Know? by John Olmsted
SEWilco
November 16th, 2004 at 11:01 am
Reviewed by Eric Scerri in the Skeptical Inquirer
rickyjames
November 16th, 2004 at 2:37 pm
…that I include the Ramtha stuff in with the water drops and the DC murder rate. Ole what’s-her-name seemed so normal during her interview shots that I didn’t even realize she was supposed to be “channeling” Ramtha at the time.
Again, I stand by the three-fourths / one-fourth split. If it takes a bunch of wackos having to glom on their own belief system to the wonderous scientific three-fourths of this movie to get it funded and made, it was a good deal. I consider the New Age crap to be a “commercial” that I’d zip thru and ignore if this were only on my TiVo.
At the core of science is a great mystery. This film highlights and delights in that mystery. That’s good enough for me; I can mentally edit out the commercials.
Drog
November 17th, 2004 at 8:12 am
I meant that the movie seems to make grand statements about reality being stranger than it appears, not you, Ricky. :)