First confession: Nick Nolte can be
my spiritual coach anytime!
The thought popped into my mind as I sat in an almost empty theater
watching the first showing of the day of, “PEACEFUL WARRIOR,” an
adaptation of Dan Millman’s bestseller, Way of the Peaceful
Warrior. I’m not a fan of the 66-year old actor; meaning I
wouldn’t go to a movie simply because he’s in it.
No, what put me in that theater seat was my curiosity about a
movie that seemed to be marketed in the same way as the “sleeper” hit, “What
the [Bleep] Do We Know?” I received a much-forwarded email
from a trusted friend that promised me FREE movie passes (courtesy
of Best Buy) for the OPENING weekend only (Mar.30) simply by clicking
on, www.peacefulwarriormovie.com
So I clicked. Then I clicked on the movie’s trailer and saw
a white bearded sage in the guise of an auto mechanic with Nolte’s
unmistakable voice engaging a smug Joe College-type in a provocative
philosophical dialogue. The kid, “Dan” (played by tall,
dark and handsome Scott Mechlowicz) sarcastically dubs him “Socrates” and
storms out of the quickie mart into the night. “Socrates” ambles
out and sits on a bench by the door. Dan looks over his shoulder
at him; the sage’s face betrays no emotion, only attention.
He takes a few more steps but feels compelled to check on the guy,
turns and he’s gone. Dan looks around. Socrates seemingly has
vanished. Then he looks up. Socrates is now standing on the roof
with the same inscrutable regard. I was hooked.
Second confession: I haven’t read Millman’s book, a re-casting
of the archetypal hero’s quest for the American New Age culture,
which has been in print continuously since its initial publication
in 1980 and revision in 2000. Sure, I’ve heard of it and Millman,
but I was put off by the coyness of calling it “an autobiographical
novel.” I mean, it’s autobiography, meaning non-fiction,
or a novel, right? The former investigative reporter in me was irked
by this hide-and-seek publicity.
Third confession: I pigged out on those free passes. I went to
the first show of the day Friday, Saturday and Sunday! Saturday,
I brought a friend and fellow life coach with me. We enjoyed discussing
it over lunch. But she was surprised that I was willing to see
it twice. Little did she know...
There was something about the script that was, well, hokey. Nolte’s
character speaks in fortune cookie proverbs, it’s true. But
his signature bass voice is a mesmerizing shape-shifter, uncoiling
from a slow growl into a ribbon of extra-fine sandpaper, gently but
persistently wearing down my resistance. I was willing to endure
moments of discomfort with the clichéd sound bytes to stay
in his presence. |
Apparently the reviewer
for the New York Times felt the same way as he struggled to pan
the film as “blatantly ludicrous” but
had to admit that, ”...the seminal fact of a "Peaceful
Warrior" is that, for all its manifest corniness, this
is an achingly sincere and supremely unembarrassed effort to
transform an audience for the good. Its heart is very much in
the right place -… a place that movies all but ignore‘ [NYT,
July 14, 2006]
What drew me back to the always near-empty theater Saturday and
Sunday mornings? From the opening scene, I surrendered to the film’s
exhilarating commitment to enchantment. “Surrendered” is
the operant word here: the music, sound effects and cinematography
are determined to overwhelm the viewer’s critical mind and
grab hold of one’s senses in a passionate, intimate embrace.
This is explicitly acknowledged by Socrates, who tells Dan: “Sometimes
you have to lose your mind to come to your senses.”What grabbed
hold of me was the truth this movie illustrates so powerfully and
so many of us misunderstand when we claim to subscribe to Teillard
de Chardin’s observation that, “We are not human beings
having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human
experience.”
Too many of us who recognize that our identity includes the fact
of our spiritual nature choose to limit our recognition of what
defines our humanity to the realm of the mind. We treat our bodies
as mind-less suits that we put on when we wake up every morning
and escape from in our sleep; as vehicles for transporting us from
one place to another; instruments of communication; and the deep
recesses from which undisciplined sensations and messy emotions
erupt and must be kept in check.
The American legacy of not only the Protestant revolution that
led to a puritanical shame of the human body, but the resurgence
of some forms of gnosticism and mysticism in the last forty years,
is to award the highest value of humanity to our intellects, while
tolerating the constraints of being “in” our physical bodies.
The epidemic of morbid obesity growing in our country is accurately
reflected in places where the prevailing theology would lead one
to expect otherwise. The Church counts gluttony among the seven
deadly sins, and in spite of the fact that St. Paul emphatically
taught the earliest Christians: "...the immoral man
sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is
a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God,
and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a
price: therefore glorify God in your body." [1 Corinthians
6: 18-20]
continue reading -> |
