Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 5 Number 3, December 2004
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Simon, Stephen, The Force Is with You, Charlottesville, Virginia, Hampton Roads, 2002. 245, 1-57174-349-9, (no hardback price), $14.95
Reviewed by
Utah State University
“I believe that the universe is sending us messages through movies—or, maybe, we are sending those messages to ourselves.” So begins Stephen Simon’s engaging book, The Force Is with You; Mystical Movie Messages that Inspire Our Lives. Simon is evidently in the know — he produced two movies hailed for their spiritual messages in the latter half of the 20th century: Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come.
Along with sharing his insightful comments on more than 70 movies, Simon explores the evolving sub-genre of Spiritual Cinema and offers an insider’s glimpse into the making of the two movies.
Spiritual Cinema, Simon affirms, is “concerned with journeys of discovery,” a different ideal and goal from the rest of the genre which focuses more on our egos. Movies in this category explore the themes of reality and time, the meaning of life and afterlife (or death), the nature of love, our vision of our world and the universe—and ultimately propose to seek the answer to the question: “Why are we here?”
The book is a celebration of passionate human inquiry that is aided by the explosively developing cinematic technology. Movies have become our visual guide to the universe. The boundary between imagination and imagery seems to be diffused by sophisticated special effects and computer animation and imaging—so much so that we can see actual images (though still controlled by the separate entity of the filmmaker) of the “what if?”
Our fascination with that
troubling question has been the challenge for many artists in the film industry.
Whether peppered with mega-dollar special effects or simply brilliantly
performed by actors who became instant legends, the movies Simon recounts for
their effort to explore beyond and beneath human inquiry have marked their
important places in the history of the genre. Though not all of them were
immediate blockbusters, Simon reassures us that movies like It’s
a Wonderful Life and 2001: A Space
Odyssey proved their power by how future audiences perceived them. With
quiet humor and indignation, he recalls the similar fate of his own movie
projects, Somewhere in Time and What
Dreams May Come.
Through his enthusiastic exploration, Simon not only confirms the legitimacy of Spiritual Cinema as a new category in the genre we need to conjure with but also plays on the irony of how the genre has faced lay audiences and critics alike who themselves needed to grow into accepting the films that called the genre to life.
In all, we are handed here a book filled with inspiration, insight and an insider’s view into movie magic at its best. Simon compiled the material of several years’ worth of his lecturing on the theme of spiritualism in movie making. His style is simple, clear and personal. His readers will most probably share his enthusiasm toward movies and will have seen most of the features he mentions—if not, they are likely to go out and rent them for a night of purposeful entertainment.