What does mind-body-spirit icon Deepak Chopra have in common
with pop-metal poster boy Jon Bon Jovi? They both belong to the
Spiritual Cinema Circle, a new DVD-of-the-month club with an
Aquarian twist. Cofounded by veteran Hollywood producer Stephen
Simon (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, What
Dreams May Come), this spiritual version of Netflix
delivers between three and six films—features,
documentaries, and shorts—to its members' mailboxes every
month.
“Spiritual cinema is a genre that, up until recently,
has not been recognized by Hollywood or mainstream media,”
Simon says. “[Yet] there are lots of us out here who want
more movies with heart and soul, movies that ask 'Who are we?'
and 'Why are we here?' but also allow us to provide our
own individual answers to those eternal questions.” To
answer that need, the Spiritual Cinema Circle is presenting a
host of lesser-known films that have been gleaned from the
festival circuit or submitted by aspiring independent
filmmakers. Think of it as a sort of New Age antidote
to Mel Gibson's Passion and an open challenge to the
sex-heavy, carnage-happy templates of Hollywood. Instead of
stern religious dogmas, these movies convey personal spiritual
messages; instead of violence and vulgarity, you get empathy and
inspiration. “At the end of the day,” hopes Simon,
“we just want to make our audiences feel at least slightly
better about being a human being.”
Marketed toward sixty million Americans who consider
themselves “spiritual but not religious,” the Circle
is part of a recent trend to infuse higher meaning into secular
entertainment—a trend that picked up a serious head of
steam in 2004 with the release of cult favorite What the
#$*! Do We Know!? and the filming of James
Redfield's Celestine Prophecy: The Movie (see
WIE Nov-Feb 2004/05). Indeed, the sheer speed of the
club's growth is compelling testament to our society's soaring
hunger for spiritual content in popular media. Since its debut
just over a year ago, the Circle has attracted almost eighteen
thousand members from sixty countries around the world. Hundreds
more are signing up every day. Over a hundred local
“spiritual cinema communities” have formed in at
least twelve countries and thirty states as venues for mystical
movie lovers to watch these films together and share their
passion for the genre. Some video stores have even started
creating “spiritual cinema” sections in their
aisles.
So what about the movies themselves? What are Deepak and Bon
Jovi getting for their $21 a month? Ranging from five-minute
animated shorts to full-length features, the Circle's
smorgasbord of outside-the-mainstream fare hides some real gems,
especially among the documentaries. Farther Than the Eye Can
See, for example, follows climber Eric Weihenmayer on a bid
to summit Mt. Everest, a daunting challenge for any mountaineer.
But what makes his story incredible is that this particular
mountaineer happens to be blind. More than a tale of
physical endurance, it's an intimate glimpse into one man's
inner struggle with, and triumph over, the experience of fear
and the idea of limitation. Too often, however, the Circle's
films lack the brave and unpretentious humanity that makes
documentaries like Farther Than the Eye Can See so
appealing. Frequently, they even seem like New Age equivalents
of daytime soap operas. Their characters can tend to be less
heroes than victims: men painfully estranged from their fathers,
husbands grieving over lost wives, women burned by love and
lonely for affection, precocious children misunderstood by the
world. They lament missed opportunities. They commiserate
together. Eventually, they find some healing in therapeutic
catharsis and/or glassy-eyed orbit around the perfect soul
mate.
Mixed reviews aside, in an entertainment climate so often
driven by the lowest common denominator of our basest impulses,
the club's swift success is evidence that higher spiritual
currents are beginning to stir in postmodern secular culture.
Poised at the leading edge of a budding niche industry that they
themselves are helping to define, they're proving that there's a
market not only for films that explore spiritual values but for
organizations that value community. With plans to start
production on their own feature film in November (based on
Simon's friend and fellow Oregonian Neale Donald Walsch's
bestseller Conversations with God) and a new online
master class in spiritual filmmaking being offered by Simon
himself, the Circle continues to take risks and pioneer
unconventional methods in order to bring more heart and soul to
the moviegoing public.
Case in point: if you're a spiritual cinemaphile who doesn't
just want to watch soul mates find each other on screen but are
in the hunt yourself, what better place to look than the annual
Spiritual Cinema Festival-at-Sea? We're sorry to report that
it's too late to join this film-festival-meets-Caribbean-cruise
on its maiden voyage—the MS Zuiderdam set sail
from Ft. Lauderdale as WIE went to press—but
there's always next year. Who knows? You might even catch a tan
with Deepak by the pool or dance the night away with the partner of your dreams while Bon Jovi belts out “Livin' on a Prayer.”