What the Bleep Do We Know!? (2004) – DVD

What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?
*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras D
starring Marlee Matlin, Elaine Hendrix, Robert Bailey Jr., John Ross Bowie
screenplay by William Arntz, Betsy Chasse and Matthew Hoffman
directed by William Arntz, Betsy Chasse and Mark Vicente

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Watching a bunch of young actresses knock themselves out with their Method masochism, Pauline Kael astutely noted how they “tried to find the motivation [where] actresses of an earlier generation would have merely provided it.” Little did she know that you could extend the exercise to philosophy: in its dogged attempt to confer genius on commonplace ideas, What the Bleep Do We Know!? proves that Method metaphysics is eminently possible. What the film doesn’t do is give us any point of view outside our own noggins, oversimplifying human experience as much as it mystifies it and dressing up self-involvement as enlightenment. It’s a movie that can’t let you see the man behind the curtain, lest you discover that he’s actually Dr. Phil.

What the Bleep Do We Know!? is about the spectacle of the process rather than the process itself. Positing poor Marlee Matlin as their sub-Errol Morris visual aid, the filmmakers intercut her misadventures as an angsty photographer with interviews with so-called experts in quantum mechanics and gooey new-agey stuff. We learn that matter is not the solid thing we think it is (it’s made up of forces, not substances), that we have the power to visualize and respond to things that don’t exist (as in memory and sexual fantasy), and that emotions are biochemically generated–which would be fine, except that the conclusion reached is that you can physically alter your reality. Something I’ll remember next time my rent is due.

It turns out that the “reality creation” they refer to is pretty minuscule. It’s the Oprah-approved you-have-control-of-your-destiny number, where emotions are physical conditions that can be wilfully changed–nothing unfamiliar to anyone who’s watched a modicum of talk TV. But the process of going cold turkey from learned responses is dressed up with world-historical import, taken down to a molecular level and “simplified” with cutesy graphics. The low point of the film comes when Matlin has to shoot a wedding where various guests demonstrate their emotional “addictions” through the manipulations of animated neural receptors. (Honest to God.) What you hoped would get to the point gets to one in a cacophonous, low-comedy free-for-all that shows the shallowness of the people involved.

What the Bleep Do We Know!? basically stops outside of your brain, allowing nothing to enter and nothing to leave. Though it’s got sense enough to get you to take the reins, it keeps you from caring what knocked you off or what you might run into once you’re riding. And while the film laughs at the solipsism that you are the centre of God’s world, it replaces it with the solipsism that you are God: If nothing is real, everything is up for grabs. I’m all for self-esteem, but the complicated matter of considering fellow unreal beings seems just as worthy of consideration as the cause and effect as lined up by various specialists. The “experts,” of course, are left unidentified, lest you discover too soon that they’re not all authorities in their field, just people with expansive opinions–but then, if you can manipulate reality, facts are sure to be next on the hit list. And what the bleep could be wrong with that?

THE DVD
Fox’s DVD release of What the Bleep Do We Know!? eerily reflects the film it renders: not really visionary, but made to sound good. Side A’s 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is a little too soft and oversaturated, and though it’s not enough to capsize the presentation, it is enough to be noticed. The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, however, brilliantly utilizes the surround channels for whooshing and zooming during the ridiculous CGI “down-the-rabbit-hole” bits. Points given also for the occasional pumping bass on incidental music and some well-thought-out solutions to the aural scramble of the wedding sequence.

Side B features a variety of pompous and self-serving extras, chief amongst them a Filmmakers’ Q&A (27 mins.) with writers/directors Betsy Chasse and William Arntz and co-director Mark Vicente compiled from numerous post-screening dialogues. They’re all quite expansive in their claims for the film, humbly hoping that it will be seen by 100 million people so that it will have the cultural impact our society so desperately needs. Their personalities are distilled in subsequent interviews, which are obtusely divvied up into individual subjects on a menu. Arntz (11 mins.) comes off as the most levelheaded of the bunch and genuinely awed by the subject and the process, though he’s made slightly suspect by his reference to Chasse as the “perky blonde” who “perked up” the process. Chasse (4 mins.) seems, frankly, not very bright, not fully comprehending the proceedings and given to explaining how the world needs the film after 9/11. Still, she’s more tolerable than Vicente (10 mins.), who’s astoundingly pompous in his estimation of the project and how he “hopes to inspire people.”

More interviews feature cast members Marlee Matlin (5 mins.), John Ross Bowe (2 mins.), Elaine Hendrix (3 mins.), and Robert Bailey, Jr. (1 min.); they’re less lengthy and far less high-flown, with Matlin coming off as the most grounded and intelligent of anyone connected with the project. Bowe suggests an actor manufacturing significance for what is really just a bread job, Hendrix is genuinely credulous of the process, and Bailey is fobbed off on the single question of “what attracted him to the film.” Also included: the video for Aeon Spoke‘s “Emmanuel” (which relies largely on clips from the movie and wilted, pretentious lyrics); the film’s trailer; and trailers for The Hunting of the President and I [Heart] Huckabees.

108 minutes; NR; 1.78:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1; CC; English, Spanish; DVD-10; Region One; Fox