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What the Bleep Do We Know!?
Fox // Unrated // March 15, 2005
List Price: $29.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
For those who aren't familiar with the back-story behind What The Bleep Do We Know, here's a brief recap on the background of the movie. Bleep played at a small theater here in Portland, Oregon (the same theater which is seen in the movie, coincidence?) for 18 weeks to massive crowds. The word spread and now Bleep fever has finally made it to DVD.
The movie is essentially a three part piece that is mixed together to form a sort of brain soup for the viewer. The first part is the fiction story which features Academy award winner Marlee Matlin in a role that shows her growth from a self-loathing woman to someone who becomes empowered by things she starts noticing in the city around here. The documentary part which features Doctors and other experts in their respective fields (including a 35,000 year old warrior from Atlantis). However one major flaw with these segments is that there is never a name or credential placed to these people until the movie is finished. The third ingredient in the mix is the animation segments which bring us down to the level of neurons and other cells in our body to show reactions to the stimuli that we bombard our bodies with each and every day.
Be warned, this movie has a very new age feeling to it, the theme of we can control and affect everything around us with thought. The example used in the movie of water being frozen crystallized into nice beautiful snowflake formations when good thoughts were beamed at them, yet when they were bombarded with negativity they formed weak brittle crystal formations. There is one thing that is almost guaranteed as a viewer, you will walk away with questions about what you just saw. Whether those questions will be ones that make you expand your thought processes like the movie hopes you will, or whether they'd be along the lines of WTF did I just see are another.
The DVD:
How's it Look:
What the Bleep? is presented in 1.85:1 widescreen. Given the low budget of the film, the presentation was actually quite refreshing. The effects all were quite clean and no major flaws were noticed with the print. Of course some scenes varied in their quality, those being the contrasts between the digital effects and the interview scenes with the experts featured in the movie.
How's the sound:
Dolby Digital 5.1 fits the movie quite well, and no gimmicky mix was here to make something out of nothing. Scenes where the surrounds were used were quite well placed, with ambience that really fit the scene quite well.
Extras:
For a movie that seemingly came out of nowhere, Bleep has made quite an impact on the culture. In one of the extras that are included on the flip-side of this DVD, regular people in cities across North America had the chance to speak with the filmmakers in an open Q & A session. Each of the three filmmakers, William Arntz, Betsy Chasse and Matthew Hoffman field questions and hear comments from fans, like the addiction counselor who admitted to have seen the film eight times already, keep in mind this was filmed before the DVD came out. This Q&A session had a lot more insight into the topics that were covered in the film, and I would even go as far as saying it's more organized than the film, and helped flesh out a lot of the topics that were covered quite quickly.
Also included are clips with the cast and crew ranging from Chasse, Hoffman and Matlin to the young boy who has a great little part in the film, Robert Bailey Jr. The topics range from speaking about their characters to what drove them to want to be involved in the film. Each clip is labeled and selectable, also a play all option is enabled for each individual member, as well as the entire interview clip section as a whole.
A music video for and Aeon Spoke song, a theatrical trailer for What the Bleep!? and trailers for I heart Huckabees and the Hunting of the President are also included.
Closing:
Definitely a movie for someone who has an open mind, if you are dead set in any of your beliefs about anything ranging from the origin of god to string theory, you may not be interested in this film. Some of the topics seem a little too "self-help" for my tastes, and I had the feeling at times that I was watching Stuart Smalley's self affirmations on SNL.
The geek factor though kept me interested, the talk of quantum theory where all possible choices for any given situation all exist simultaneously, but only the one we want to see is what we see is a subject that fascinates me.
Is this a movie that everyone should own? No, probably not. Is this a movie that people should see? Yes definitely. Whether or not you believe the topics discusses doesn't matter. What the film makers wanted was a total of 100 million people to see this movie, and to stop and think about it for a second as even that contemplation of the ideas suggested can make a difference. My suggestion is to rent this movie.
Additional reading:
A great article about What the Bleep do We Know!? can be found here, on the Willamette Week's website.
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