| Want a Guide to Top Videos &
Films? Look no farther Book Review | by Tim Miejan THE FORCE IS WITH YOU: Mystical Movie Messages That Inspire Our Lives, by Stephen Simon (2002, Walsch Books/Hampton Roads), 244 pages, $14.95. Glance at the volumes of video and film encyclopedias and DVD guides in your local bookstore, but do not pick them up. Don't even stop to browse through them. Keep walking. Swerve around the tempting stack of new releases and go directly to the information desk. Wait patiently, and when prompted, ask in a polite but forceful manner: "Please direct me to a copy of Stephen Simon's new book: The Force is With You." Purchase it. Consider it a post-holiday gift to yourself. You most likely have seen many of the films that noted Hollywood producer and author Stephen Simon refers to in the Force is With You: Mystical Movie Messages That Inspire Our Lives: The Matrix; 2001: A Space Odyssey; E.T.; Groundhog Day; Heaven Can Wait; Star Wars; and many others. But I guarantee that you'll want to watch them again, with new eyes, after reading Simon's astute descriptions of films from the past four decades that he has assigned as belonging to a new genre of film: spiritual cinema. Simon's groundbreaking work echoes the fine reviews by Raymond Teague in his 2000 release Reel Spirit: A Guide to Movies That Inspire, Explore and Empower, but Simon's presence as a Hollywood insider takes us much deeper into the consciousness of filmmaking. The Force is With You does not provide separate film reviews, summaries, plot lines, character lists or any of the fine print found in other film capsules. This is a book that explores the evolution of consciousness and film's role in the process. More than 60 films are placed into categories -- Reality and Time, Visionary Adventures, Life after Life, Aliens, among others -- and each category is explored thoroughly and intelligently, from this filmmaker's perspective. Examples: -- On The Matrix -- "On one level, this portends a dark, cataclysmic future followed closely by a cruel hoax. Sounds pretty nihilistic, right? So why do I find it so exhilarating? It questions the very nature of reality. Ignore the reasons they create to justify it and the concept itself is achingly beautiful and radical." -- On Star Wars -- "Luke is being urged to close his eyes and trust his own inner connectiveness to the power of the universe and his unique place within it. This is a crucial distinction. It is not giving power away and praying that the independent power outside of himself will smile benignly and grant his wish. It is saying you have the power within yourself, Luke, to allow this to happen by connecting with the forces inside and outside of you." -- On The Sixth Sense -- "The notion of spirits lingering on the Earth plane because of unfinished business has been used in movies for almost as long as film has existed. Sixth Sense is a moving reminder that these beings need not frighten us; rather, our love and understand can help them transcend this plane and rejoin the loved ones who await them, and eventually us, on the other side. -- On The Truman Show -- "Once you hear, you never forget. Once you ask, you never stop asking. And so it is with Truman. He represents the innocent seeker in all of us who wakes up one day to discover that the reality he thought he knew is changed, and he finds himself desperately wanting to know what is just beyond the horizon." Stephen Simon, producer of What Dreams May Come and Somewhere in Time, never intended to become an author. His friend, Neale Donald Walsch, convinced him to sit down and put his thoughts down on paper. Our good fortune was that Simon listened. Our good fortune also is that Simon had something relevant to say. It is all good and well to note a thread of spirituality and love that runs through the history of filmmaking and quite another to carefully identify the elements and pinpoint the necessity of even creating a new genre of film. We have actions, comedies, mysteries and drama. Why spiritual cinema? Because it is time. "...It is my belief," Simon writes, "that these films hold the key to the next century in entertainment." That key is mapping the inner voyage beyond space and time and reality. "What do all of these films have in common?" he asks. "They contain illuminating aspects of the single-most important question that we ask ourselves: Why are we here?" Tim Miejan is editor of The EDGE. Contact him at (651) 578-8969 or e-mail editor@edgenews.com Copyright (c) 2002 Tim Miejan |
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