Docs are good for you
by Howard Schumann

In a society that appears determined to keep us alienated from our true self, knowledge of reality achieved through personal experience or visionary states seems to be a fit subject only for media giggles or academic smugness. In his experimental three-hour documentary that took ten years to complete, Gambling, Gods and LSD, Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler wants to change this. Part travelogue and part photographic essay, the film takes us on a "journey of discovery" to different parts of the globe, observing the different ways in which people seek transcendence. During the course of the film, we are presented with a dazzling display of images and sounds of nature and humanity: alpine fog, boys playing cricket, running water, a crippled beggar looking at the camera, a moving train, a jet plane reaching skyward, among others.

Mettler interviews biochemists, heroin addicts, gamblers, born-again Christians, and 97-year old Albert Hoffman, the inventor of LSD, each seeking to express the meaning of their life. Beginning with an evangelical gathering of believers at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship Church, where worshippers writhe on the floor in beatific agony, the camera takes us to Las Vegas, Arizona, Switzerland, and southern India. We see a hotel being demolished in Las Vegas as a young woman watches in a dreamlike state from her hotel room. A teenage girl is strapped to a machine in an erotic pose as a sex-shop owner describes his Electro-erotic stimulator. Two Swiss heroin addicts talk about their highs and lows; a Hispanic card player shows us the cremated remains of his wife in a red scarf; we visit a dog race in Zurich Switzerland; and experience fire dancing on a beach in India.

Described by the director as being about "transcendence, the denial of death, the illusion of safety and our relationship to nature," the film moves quickly from one reality to the other. The images speak for themselves - some profound, some banal, others simply bizarre. "Ultimately", Mettler says, "the film is about the people who watch it."

Mr. Mettler is a visionary director and his work is audacious and often mesmerizing, but his film left me wanting more. Though drugs are one of the unifying themes of the film and LSD appears in the title, there is no discussion of what LSD is about or of the psychedelic revolution of the 60s that shattered our assumptions about reality and, for better or worse, defined an entire decade. Mettler dwells on the virtues of addictive drugs like heroin, but shows us nothing about shamanism, native rites of passage, Buddhist chanting, healing ceremonies, or paranormal phenomena involving the use of sacred plants and substances occurring in nature, phenomena that have led other mind explorers to reach profound personal insights.

Gambling, Gods and LSD is a unique attempt to allow us to see transcendence in the kaleidoscope of human activity, and I recommend that it be seen, yet much of it is simply sensational or striving for a "trippy" effect. There is definitely a movement taking place in the world that seeks to define reality outside of the rigid mechanistic structures spoon-fed to us since birth by academics and the media, but the film doesn't seem to be looking in the right places. The nature of consciousness remains elusive, and perhaps now more than ever requires us to look through different lenses.

Do you ever dream that you can fly like a bird, freely soaring above the Himalayan Mountains or the Pacific Ocean? The Oscar-nominated documentary Winged Migration, directed by Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats & Jacques Perrin, allows you to do this vicariously. The film follows multiple species of birds answering an urgent and mysterious call to migrate in search of food over thousands of miles through changes in time and seasons. It is both a dazzling travelogue (a natural for IMAX) and a poetic ballet of energy and grace.

Using gliders, balloons, helicopters and a special type of aircraft known as the Ultra Light Motorized craft, Winged Migration was two years in the making and required 450 people, including 17 pilots and 14 cinematographers to shoot, and is an extraordinary technical achievement. The migration of birds is still one of the world's supreme mysteries, yet I found the narration to provide little insight into its secrets, content to name the different species of birds and the distances they are flying. If, however, you still see beauty in the natural world, care about the environment, and are awed by stunning vistas of seven continents, this film is for you.

Named as one of the best films of 2002 in the Film Comment poll of 59 international film critics, To Be and To Have provides an insight into the learning process of thirteen children, ages 4 to 10, in a one-room schoolhouse during a seven-month period. The film is a tribute to the innocence of childhood and to the dedication of their teacher, 55-year old George Lopez.

Director Nicolas Philibert selected Lopez' rural schoolhouse in the Auvergne region of southeast France from a list of 300 schools. As he explained: "I wanted a school with a limited number of pupils so that each child would be easily identifiable and become a character in the film. I also wanted the fullest age range possible -- from kindergarten to the final year of primary school -- to show the atmosphere and charm of these small, eclectic communities and the very specific work required from the teachers."

Filming almost 600 hours of the children's daily activities with a crew of four, Philibert allows us to re-experience the long forgotten frustrations of learning how to trace letters, express our feelings verbally, count until we run out of numbers, and get along with our classmates. Mr. Lopez has taught in the same school for twenty years and has a unique ability to simply be with and respect children for who they are and what they say. He is a model of patience and an example of how to listen without making moral judgments or instant evaluations. He says of the teaching profession, "It takes time and personal involvement and the children return that again and again."

Most of the children come from families who are not well educated, but the film shows the parents struggling to do their best to solve the mysteries of their child's homework. To Be and To Have is also filled with humor, as in a sequence when two very young students are fighting a losing battle with a photocopier, and when a student insists on using the word "pal" instead of "friend."

Mr. Lopez works closely with each child, showing sensitivity in the way he handles problems as when he asks two fighting students to imagine the effect their behavior has on others. Time and again he mediates disputes by helping children to communicate with each other as in the scene where he assists two older boys in understanding the reasons they got into a fight. "You were just testing each other, but then it degenerated, no?" he asks.

The film begins in December with footage of snow falling on a herd of cows, and continues until the following summer. By the end we have come to know many of the students. When the teacher announces he is going to retire in another year, the emotion on his face when the children plant kisses on his cheek as they say goodbye for their vacation is very touching. To Be and To Have celebrates the dedication of teachers whose unacknowledged labors make a profound difference in the lives of our children. A film of warmth and humanity, it is the highest grossing French documentary of all time. Bravo.

©2003 Howard Schumann
CineScene