This film I saw in theater back in 1990 has been one I've wanted to see again at some point. It was slow to arrive on VHS, and then much later a DVD appeared (and is expensive) on European PAL format. Interesting talk between three intellectuals, think "My Dinner With Andre" with three people and more world and ecological topics discussed as well as personal perspectives from each of the participants. Wonderful film for the thinking person. I notice that only VHS copies (no DVDs) turn up on eBay in the $20 to $50 price range. Yet way below a given listing once you click on it, one can see "Sponsored Links" adds for DVDs that appear to me to be in many cases (but not all?) MODs (Movie On Demand) which to me is another way of saying burned DVD-R. Ok, there are several stores eBay is pimping outside of their own site with rare and hard to find titles which the sites admit some of which are burned on demand. Look at bottom of this listing and see the stores offering "Mindwalk" on DVD. Mindwalk [VHS], Good VHS, Gabrielle Danchick, Sam Watersto, Bernt Amadeus Capra | eBay My question is, is the burned on demand a legit Copy mastered from a good print, or a boot from VHS? If it's just a boot - I may as well get the VHS and digitize my own file from it and forget about a DVD-R. Since no movie studio is mentioned, it should be obvious to me, but I don't generally seek out hard to find films as much as I do music things.
Oh, I saw this at home so long ago I can't remember the format; but I remember having mixed feelings about the characters. I never wanted to revisit them but now that you've brought it back to my consciousness I might give it another go. Can't answer your EBay question but you may want to query the YT poster who was kind enough to put it up: Cheers.
I think I really just need to contact those sellers listed as "Sponsored Links" and politely ask what the source is for this film, and is it one of the MOD titles. But I think I already know the answer. Anyway maybe you would like it more now as a mature viewer in a way you did not so much previously?
Doubtful. I'm nowhere near as sharp as I was 20 years ago, though I'm better at divining where a situation (narrative) is headed. Forgot Sam Waterston was in this. I like his voice-over work (Ken Burns' stuff). Also, he did a nice turn as Abe Lincoln in C-SPAN's telecast of The Lincoln-Douglass Debates. Funny that his character is running for the Senate in Mindwalk. Probably aspired for public office in real life.
The cast of Liv Ullman, Sam Waterston, and John Heard is exceptional in my opinion. The thing is I want to see it a second time with someone else who I consider smart and into it. And nobody is into this movie that I know of. It's a real obscure (mostly) forgotten about movie.
Well, the movie's focus quickly changes to Sonia (Liv Ullman) from the (frankly) smug poet once she joins the pair of friends (Waterston and Heard), and rightly so, not only because of the force, coherence and convincing nature of her ideas but because of her emotional investment. Clearly, as written, Sonia is a nuclear physicist with a passion. But it it is not the passion that binds her to everything and everyone around her, like the passion of Christ, for example, or any of the major prophets, but another form of thought which never lets her leave her self, for which the poet ultimately criticizes her. In other words, her all embracing and interconnected theory of universal relationship ends up as just that - not the reality she attempts to describe. But most science - and scientists - are like that, in my opinion. What grated me most was the poet's insistence on a false - or better - superficial and almost removed sense of comaraderie between the trio. Why does he keep doing it? For some assumed audience? What's wrong, not only with tension, but a good knock down, drag out fight? Meathead that the senator tended to be, at least was willing to openly offend Sonia when he felt like it. Despite his admission of love for the other two at the end of the movie the poet (though I hesitate to even call him that, more the hack writer) is clearly the most miserable of the pack - as folks who insist on the status quo generally are. (Thought it was bad move at he beginning of the film to have the poet talk about the senator under his breath (dubbed remarks) in the middle of a conversation with him; a device that was oddly not repeated and led me - as it would anyone - to question the director's intentions.) One key spoken passage from Sonia intrigued me: "You asked me what I think you should do. I don't know what you should do. You know what you should do. I know that what worked for me was to come here; be quiet, and take one thought at a time, think one thought to its end. Now that was the first real step. Telling you was my second. The senator could barely receive that before retorting, "You can't pass the buck that easily!" But had he really listened to her? Does anything she say reflect a reality for him? Does he realize what a big step that is? This frequent bone headedness almost derailed the movie for me a number of times (along with the scorekeeper poet) but I stuck it out cuz of Liv.
No, I recall that she has a rift with her daughter that she mentioned and has not yet been able to work it out. Liv's B.S. is working out for everyone except for herself in her personal life. So yeah, it comes down to her having to face the (her) music, and not pass the buck. She is in near tears at this realization no? All the science in the world is not going to cut on this one. It has been 28 years since I have seen it.
But it isn't BS that she espouses. On the contrary, she makes the film's most valid point about ecological thinking. Look at the mess we're in now. At several points during the film when she objects to the paternalistic, greedy, over-consumptive culture ruining the planet I had to say 'Amen!' But she could not get beyond her perception of the world. It's thinking, period, that divided the three of them, who present a kind of microcosm of the world, despite Sonia's very convincing model of interconnectedness. It's part of the message that the poet, in his own way, tried to convey at the end of the film. I didn't feel that Sonia's daughter and film's conclusion damned Sonia in any way but spoke to the limitations of all thinking, including hers.
