Review of Mindwalk (1991) by Edith N — 21 Feb 2007

Someone on IMDB is of the opinion that, because this has essentially no plot, it isn't a movie. Which is silly, of course. It isn't a [i]story[/i], quite, but nowhere is it written that movies must have plot. (He also complains about Liv Ullmann's "fake" accent. I think she'd be alarmed to hear that, given that it isn't.).

This is not for everyone. For one, some of the science is a bit dodgy, but as I've said, when you get science to the level that people like me can understand it, you've lost a lot of the validity.

I also disagree that Sam Waterston's Jack is a strawman, a caricature. People like him exist. Really. I've met them.

However, I found this movie fascinating. It was the kind of conversation you get between people of radically different disciplines who talk on subjects that are of common interest to them. This film features a physicist, a politician, and a poet wandering around Mont St. Michele discussing how the Universe works; there's a reason it's one of the trailers on the video of [i]A Brief History of Time[/i]. That's pretty much it.

Oh, we know a few other things. The physicist, Liv Ullmann's Sonia, has a daughter--the gorgeous Ione Skye--to whom and from whom she is distant. Jack has just failed in a bid for the Democratic nomination for President--to Michael Dukakis, sadly for us all. (I'd vote for Jack. Not that it matters, given that I was eleven when he lost the election.) John Heard's Thomas is hardly a best-selling poet, if indeed there is such thing anymore.

Sonia's a little too down on patriarchy for someone espousing the fundamental connection of all things. It's tyranny she's really opposed to; pretending it's exclusively the domain of men is hypocritical. She also needs to decide whether she's opposed to Western medicine or creating new techniques for it.

However, some of the points raised are ones I'll think about for some time. For example, was it Oppenheimer or Truman who carried the greater blame for the dropping of the atomic bomb? How much of ourselves to we give to our work, and who do we hurt most when it's too much? And really, is modern society [i]actually[/i] Descarte's fault?