Gambling, Gods and LSD

"Reality is far more mutable, capacious, and capricious than we generally allow ourselves to imagine' - Daniel Pinchbeck from "Breaking Open the Head"

In a society that appears determined to keep us alienated from our true self, knowledge of reality achieved through personal experience or visionary states seems to be a fit subject only for media giggles or academic smugness. In his experimental three-hour documentary that took ten years to complete, Gambling, Gods and LSD, Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler wants to change this. Part travelogue and part photographic essay, the film takes us on a "journey of discovery" to different parts of the globe observing the different ways in which people seek transcendence. During the course of the three hours, we are presented with a dazzling display of images and sounds of nature and humanity: alpine fog, boys playing cricket, running water, a crippled beggar looking at the camera, a moving train, a jet plane reaching skyward among others. Mettler interviews biochemists, heroin addicts, gamblers, born-again Christians, and 97-year old Albert Hoffman, the inventor of LSD, each seeking to express the meaning of their life but ideas are not fully explored.

Beginning with an evangelical gathering of believers at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship Church where worshippers writhe on the floor in beatific agony, the camera takes us to Las Vegas, Nevada, Arizona, Switzerland, and southern India. We see a hotel being demolished in Las Vegas as a young woman watches in a dreamlike state from her hotel room, a teenage girl strapped to a machine in an erotic pose as a sex-shop owner describes his Electro-erotic stimulator. Two Swiss heroin addicts talk about their highs and lows, a Hispanic card player shows us the cremated remains of his wife in a red scarf, we visit a dog race in Zurich Switzerland, and experience fire dancing on a beach in India. Described by the director as being about "transcendence, the denial of death, the illusion of safety and our relationship to nature", the camera moves quickly from one reality to the other. The images speak for themselves - some profound, some banal, others simply bizarre. "Ultimately", Mettler says, "the film is about the people who watch it."

Mr. Mettler is a visionary director and his work is audacious and often mesmerizing, but his film left me wanting more. Though drugs are one of the unifying themes of the film and LSD appears in the title, there is no discussion of what LSD is about or of the psychedelic revolution of the 60s that shattered our assumptions about reality and, for better or worse, defined an entire decade. Mettler dwells on the virtues of addictive drugs like heroin but shows us nothing about shamanism, native rites of passage, Buddhist chanting, healing ceremonies, or paranormal phenomena involving the use of sacred plants and substances occurring in nature, phenomena that have led other mind explorers to reach profound personal insights.

Gambling, Gods and LSD is a unique attempt to allow us to see transcendence in the kaleidoscope of human activity and I recommend that it be seen, yet much of it is simply sensational or striving for a "trippy" effect. There is definitely a movement taking place in the world that seeks to define reality outside of the rigid mechanistic structures spoon-fed to us since birth by academics and the media, but the film does not seem to be looking in the right places. Goethe has said, "We all walk in mysteries…under particular conditions the antennae of our souls are able to reach out beyond their physical limitations". Even in our modern age, the nature of consciousness remains elusive and perhaps now requires us to look through a different pair of glasses.

Most of the criticisms I hear levied at this film just run along the lines of "it's too long!" (insert frustrated whine here) While I agree with some of the comments about certain weaknesses of the film I think that on the whole it is worthwhile because it inspires you to think (whether you actually do or not is up to you). Anyone annoyed with this movie because it a)is 3 hours long, and b) doesn't SAY anything must have walked into the wrong theatre. Check out the romantic comedy down the hall. At least criticize the film based on the objectives it is setting. This film is not trying to be easy to digest or to provide a succinct message. It is more along the lines of 'Baraka' or 'Koyaanisqatsi' in attempting to create a meditative experience for the audience. Those movies were also long and consisted of many disparate scenes with no narration. And they are made so ON PURPOSE. They leave it up to the audience to decide if there is any meaning to be gleaned from the experience. I thought this movie had many profound moments (along with things I didn't like)and I'll need to see it a few times to even begin to get it all. But, if you want something that will tell you exactly what to think then you probably should leave the theatre and I'm baffled as to why you entered in the first place. Just because a film demands something of you doesn't make it amazing art, but it doesn't just make it nonsense either.

Peter Mettler's Gambling, Gods and LSD is a three-hour experimental trip across time and cultures who was a regular cinematographer in Atom Egoyan films. Sadly, this film is greatly underrated when compared to other films of its genre. It's a semi-essay film, a personal journey around the world in search of transcendence in all its facets.

It's a big film trip that brings together everything that makes Peter Mettler's films and it's portrayed in such a way i don't feel like I'm being sold anything or the story being too self-indulgent.

One memorable sequence I will mention is the Zurich needle park segment, also the sex shop episode in search of happiness and love followed by the interviews with born-again Christians and with Albert Hoffman, the inventor of LSD.

It is an unique movie experience that compels the viewers to think and general audience might find it weird but for the fans of Chris Marker, Herz Frank, Kenneth Anger, Frans Zwartjes, and Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi you will not be disappointed.

This bilious garbage is like a high schooler's attempt to recreate "Koyaanisqatsi". Many of the same visual motifs are copied (poorly), right down to the cave drawings in the American southwest. From filming the drug addict buddy smoking a cigar in the dark by a Toronto river, to the endless cliché of filming in Las Vegas, this movie is an empty, ham-handed attempt at philosophical discourse on our culture, times, and humanity. Narrated in a monotone voice that is groping to sound worldly yet detached, enlightened yet skeptical, not cool yet cool, this film is the worst kind of self-indulgence. It strives to be profound at every turn, but it ultimately comes off as profound and sophisticated as a whoopie cushion.

This film apparently won an award as Best Documentary in 2003 in Canada. I cringe to think of the competition it beat out. Leave this windy mess on the video store shelf, and rent CUBE, TREED MURRAY, WAYDOWNTOWN, LAST NIGHT, or BARNONE. Gambling, Gods, and LSD is a vapid waste of time, film, and no doubt Canadian grant money. There are many other films that do a much better job of representing the wonderful cinema being made in Canada. This crap is not.

What an unbelievable waste of talent to create this movie. And a waste of my time to watch it. As well, if someone in the Canadian government made the decision to assist in the funding of this epic time waster, they should either voluntarily resign, or be forced to watch it.

While this movie did have a lot of amazing camera shots and scenery; it had little else. I couldn't determine anything but a vague a plot or plan that I could follow or much less enjoy. I watched approximately 60% of this movie at normal speed (and fast forward through the rest) all the time hoping it would somehow miraculously improve. I couldn't believe there was nothing to this movie but some nice camera shots and images of scenery.

Please don't waste your time watching it. Perhaps the producer of this movie was on LSD when he made it. Who knows for sure!