Once upon a time, we humans spent our evenings sitting around the fire, listening to elders tell the stories that gave us clues about who we are, and why we are here. Today, the movie screen provides the fire, and Hollywood provides the stories that are still as important to us as they ever were.
Here is a list of the top ten movies that reflect an inherently New Age point of view. Generically spiritual or life-affirming films do not belong on this list, nor do many films about ghosts and the afterlife (although plenty of New Agers do speculate like mad about what happens to us after death.)
Movies such as Ghost, or What Dreams May Come, present a dualistic view of reality in which spirit is separate from matter, and the bad are fundamentally separate from the good. A film expresses a unique New Age perspective only when it presents its version of reality in idealistic terms. For example, in the Star Wars Trilogy, reality is the expression of spirit, or the Force which “binds the universe together.” There is, of course, a “dark side” to the Force, but it is clearly made up of one all-encompassing energy. This definition of the Force is idealism in a nutshell.
A few of these movies are relatively unknown gems, but most were very successful commercially, and a few, like Star Wars or The Matrix, became cultural phenomenons. I naturally take this to mean that an idealistic picture of the universe resonates hugely for audiences. I hope more filmmakers develop many more movies that feed our hunger for meaning.
1. The Matrix
Watching the Matrix can hit you like an enlightenment experience in itself. The millennia-old idealistic idea of reality as maya or “illusion,” is brought to stark, riveting life by the Wachowski Brothers in a movie that hit popular culture like a much-needed slap in the face with its message of “Wake up!”
Our hero, Neo (Keanu Reeves), is stuck in the illusion of the Matrix, a literal slave to his thoughts about reality. He suspects there is something missing in his understanding, but he is not sure what. Then the mysterious Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) offers him a way out – the recognition of “the truth.” It is offered as a choice available to everyone.
Neo chooses truth and is released from the Matrix in a squirm-inducing sequence that illuminates how ugly it is to be enslaved by illusion. Now free to move about an admittedly scary reality, Neo is nevertheless determined to help others win their liberation as well. But first, he must learn to navigate the illusory world in order to reach the people that need rescuing, and battle “bad guys” that he knows are not truly real.
In the story, set in a world which mirrors Eastern philosophy even as it parallels the Jesus story -- Neo is called “The One,” the subject of prophecy, the man who must sacrifice himself to win the salvation of humanity, a man who dies in the illusory world, yet is resurrected by love. East meets West in this astonishing film, which understands freedom as a violent fight against the cruel oppression of ego and illusion.
2. Star Wars Trilogy, Episodes IV, V & VI.
Who doesn’t remember the first thrill of seeing George Lucas’ Star Wars, being swept away into a galaxy far far away, to a world that was completely unknown and original and yet somehow very familiar?
In the world’s most popular movie series ever – which is explicitly based on Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” archetype -- a small band of rebels is seeking to “restore freedom to the galaxy.” Young Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamil) must learn to master the energy of The Force, by getting in touch with his intuition and instincts, in his battle against the “Dark Side,” – in other words, the side of Ego.
We learn that Luke’s father, the “evil” Darth Vader, was once the good Jedi who turned to the Dark Side when he came to value his ego’s quest for power over his soul’s desire to love.
In the series’ second installment, The Empire Strikes Back, the enlightened Jedi Master Yoda, like Master Obiwan Kenobi from the first film, trains Luke in a veritable New Age course about staying in the moment, and the power of belief.
The unprecedented success of these movies show how satisfied we are by stories that portray the inner battle we all feel between soul and ego, “good” and “evil.”
3. I Heart Huckabees
This captivating comedy swiftly and unabashedly dives into the “big questions” of meaning when Albert (Jason Schwarzman) a conservationist/poet hires two “existential detectives” (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) to help him unravel a coincidence that has been bugging him. The detectives try to teach him about the “big blanket of unity” that connects all and encourage him to “dismantle” his personality. Unhappy with such abstract help, Albert bolts with a fireman in the middle of an existential breakdown (Mark Wahlberg) to become disciples of a French mistress of chaos and meaningless (Isabelle Huppert). When our two lost souls learn to make peace with paradox, we are happy for them, and for ourselves, caught up in it. The script is clever and absurd all at once, and the divine cast, which includes Jude Law and Naomi Watts, is appropriately lighthearted in unraveling such deep dilemmas. A delicious treat for those hungry for a movie with metaphysical bite.
4. What the Bleep Do We Know?
Explicitly “New Age” (without using the term), this documentary/fable became a sensation in different parts of the country as a mind-blowing experience that all but required repeat viewings. In between interviews of physicists, scientists and other alleged experts questioning the nature of reality, the viewer gets a graphic introduction to “new” physics and how it all plays out in our brains, and influences the choices we make in our daily lives.
We see all this information play out through the ego-bound character of Amanda (Marlee Matlin), who is cranky from conditioning and being controlled by her negative thoughts. As we follow her through a lively and often funny story (guests at a Polish wedding dance to Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love while high on their own brain chemicals), she learns to become aware of the power of her thoughts. And as she struggles to learn to be nice to herself, we realize how much we are like her.
It is impossible to watch this movie and not feel like one has experienced surprising realizations about one’s own potential. Meanwhile, the movie’s cartoon rendering of brain chemicals surging around our bodies with their own mindless agenda provides liberating images that stay with you. Since seeing this movie several times, I no longer feel like a puppet on the strings of my own emotions. I have learned to wait for chemicals to “wear off” before I act. In this regard, especially, the movie was literally life-changing for me.
5. The Films of Charlie Kaufman
Just about any movie written by the brilliant Charlie Kaufman is going to be a startlingly original, funny and eye-opening experience. Being John Malkovich opens a “metaphysical can of worms” when married couple Craig (John Cusack) and Lottie (Cameron Diaz) find a cramped and damp portal into the consciousness of the actor John Malkovich. Lottie is liberated by the experience of being someone else (as are the lines of people paying $200 for their 15 minute journey through the portal). Meanwhile, like an ego run amuck, Craig learns to control Malkovich like a puppet, leaving the poor actor buried inside his own head. A gloriously absurd tale of how we get lost inside our identity.
Adaptation is an inside-out creative look at the stories we tell ourselves, and how those stories become our reality. Kaufman literally writes himself into the movie, or to be more exact, he writes two versions of himself into the movie, as he shows us how he wrestles with himself trying to write the movie he is actually in. A bracing Mobius-strip of a movie that is only a little flattened by its purposely gimmicky ending.
In The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which earned Kaufman his much-deserved Academy Award, we follow the tortured adventure of Joel as he fights his own attempt to have his memory erased. In the effort to avoid the pain of a break-up with Clementine, Joel follows his impulsive girlfriend’s example and contracts with a doctor to have all his memories of the relationship erased. It is only as he experiences each memory one last time that he begins to appreciate the moments for what they actually were, instead of the interpretation he later pinned to them. When the wiped-clean Joel and Clementine agree to give their relationship another shot, knowing that it will end up the same pleasurable-painful way, our characters make a thrilling choice to accept life and love with all its ups and downs, a choice it just so happens that we ourselves must make every day.
6. Groundhog Day
The New Age often preaches that time is an illusion, and in this delightfully literal exploration of the eternal now, the cranky and self-centered Phil Connors (Bill Murray) must relive the same Groundhog Day over and over. Sharply written and acted, we get to watch Phil go from reckless joy at the lack of consequences, to suicidal despair over what he perceives as his inability to escape his surroundings. His efforts to control the situation and turn it to his advantage are portrayed to giddy comedic effect, but eventually, Phil learns to fully inhabit and completely appreciate the moment he is given. When he stops resisting “what is,” he is not only set free within time again, but he wins the woman he could have never hoped to attract before his stay in limbo. This fantasy co-written and directed by Harold Ramis is a profound metaphysical lesson that plays as a fiendishly funny romp.
7. The Truman Show
In this beautiful movie of the “reality is not what it seems” genre, our hero Truman (Jim Carrey) is stuck in a world he believes is real, but is entirely fake, built by the god-like Christof (Ed Harris) as the “world’s largest movie set.” Raised from birth in this fake world, Truman has always accepted the reality which he has been given, but he begins to suspect that something is not quite right.
A literal interpretation of the idealistic tenet that all of life is an illusory drama played out in the mind of god, the movie follows Truman’s struggle to liberate himself from a life in which he is controlled by his fears and the desires of others for him to meet their needs. In other words, Truman no longer wants to be a character in a movie, even as “star” of the show. Rather, he wants to become an authentic person, living an authentic life. We cannot help but cheer for him in the end, as he risks death to sail to the edge of his known world, and bravely steps out the doorway, past the threshold of illusion, into the mysterious world of reality.
8. Pleasantville
A close relative of “The Truman Show,” this slow-moving but visually stunning movie is another fantasy about waking up from illusion to the beauty of reality. When two siblings (Tobey Maguire and Reese Whitherspoon) get sucked into the black-and-white TV world of fictional Pleasantville, they are received like enlightened teachers by the clueless townsfolk. Stuck in ruts of habit and trapped by fear of the unknown, the people begin to literally turn color when they “awake” to their true selves. The essence of a true self remains frustratingly unclear in the movie -- for some it is a burst of feeling, whether from sexual longing or from anger, for others it is a simple decision to act differently. Yet it is unarguably inspiring to watch a group of people struggle to transform themselves and their world.
9. Memento
Although this film does not present any view about the nature of reality that can be identified as New Age, it is still a dazzling time shuffle that portrays how life tumbles directly, shockingly and pretty much meaninglessly out of this moment. Just as interestingly, it shows us how much of our sense of self (ego) is based on memory. A former cop (Guy Pearce) who lost his short term memory at the same time his wife was murdered, is looking for revenge in spite of his formidable handicap. We see the payback unfold at the movie’s start, then move backward in time as we move forward in the movie, scene by scene, loop by loop, until the beginning-at-the-end in which we see him choose the road he will take, even when he knows the road he chooses will have no meaning but what he makes up as he goes. This movie left me breathless.
10. The Wizard of Oz
One of the most beloved movies of all time, this gorgeous musical fantasy is a Jungian sojourn through the psyche of our young heroine, Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland). When a bang on the head in the middle of a tornado sends Dorothy into the land of her unconscious, she begins a heroic journey to ask the help of the Wizard of Oz to help her get “home.” Along the way, she make allies and dodges a fearsome enemy in the Wicked Witch, and undertakes many challenges to prove herself worthy. Of course, as in all heroic journeys, Dorothy is really looking for the essence of her true self. She also gains the recognition that “there’s no place like home,” meaning she is exactly where she is supposed to be.
Honorable mentions: Moulin Rouge, eXistenZ, Family Man, Waking Life
Do you have your own favorite that you feel belongs on the list? Let me know at teenabooth@gmail.com.
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