Gambling, Gods and LSD

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.

This film has received tonnes of hype in Canada, specifically Toronto, because the filmmaker Peter Mettler lives here and he's worked with Atom Egoyan. It won best documentary at the Genies or Geminis or whatever the hell you call the Canadian equivalent of the Academy Awards (side note: I guess Gary Sinise was a presenter at the award show this year, and the crowd apparently erupted when he took to the stage. That's how lame the Canadian Movie Award Show is). Also, the film has been written about in Macleans, The Toronto Star, The Globe, The National Post, and countless other rags. EVERY SINGLE REVIEW I HAVE READ HAS GLOWED WITH PRAISE FOR THIS FILM:

"One of the most remarkable features of this or any year"; "Mesmerizing.Hallucinogenic.a documentary that is more dreamlike than any drama"; "Like ingesting Christ in Communion or dropping that first hit of LSD, this movie may change the very essence of your being"; or this gem: "A film trip. A world film".

I offer these snippets of praise, simply because NONE OF THEM IS TRUE. Actually. Well, maybe the last one is, since it was filmed in various locations within the world. And we had to walk to the theatre, so I guess it was also a film trip. Like a field trip, but to a film.

The documentary is 3 hours, and I've read that it originally clocked in at 55 HOURS. To which the distributor, Alliance Atlantis, said "That's a tad too long". So he edits it down to 3 hours and by God, he could have easily chopped off another 90 minutes or so. I said to Kerri as we left the theatre, "Even Eliot had an editor when he wrote The Wasteland".

What Mettler did here was take a camera with him while he was on vacation in India, Switzerland, Las Vegas, Monument Valley and Toronto (?) and filmed different things he saw. So it's like a journey, a personal journey that weaves in the topics of gambling, gods.....and uhh, LSD. Have you ever filmed cool stuff when you were on vacation? Me too, so let's get together some time and we'll splice it all together willy-nilly like, and then shop the result around to see if there are any takers. K?

There are parts of this film that are pretty remarkable, many things I've never seen before on celluloid. I will never forget such scenes (the little boy getting his head shaved with a straight razor; the Christian God-In near the airport in Toronto; the interviews in Switzerland with the former junkies; the final shot of the child chasing the camera). I will also never forget the truly juvenile, substandard camerawork throughout much of the film. I can't tell you how many times the director had the handicam shots aiming at the ground or at such an angle as to make the viewer wonder if he actually knew the camera was on. You know all those boring home movies you've seen where the cameraperson forgets to turn the record button off? THERE WERE SEVERAL MOMENTS LIKE THAT IN THIS FILM, and it was funded by Telefilm Canada, among others. AAARGH! I wanna pull my hair out over this film. I swear. Edit your movie, Peter! I understand what you're trying to do, but it doesn't work very well, sadly.

Annoying point #2: the director himself narrated the documentary at various points, since I guess he thought there was going to be the need for some kind of verbal guidance. So he interjected with poignant little things like "I see a thought. But how do I show you what I cannot see?" Or something like "I soon realised that the film was making itself, and I was a subject in this blah blah..." good lord someone get me the hell out of here before I puke all over the guy in front of me who came alone and probably writes for the entertainment section of the UofT student newspaper. We don't need the narration, Peter. It cheapens the film and it is ultimately unnecessary to tell us your silly silly thoughts.

I could seriously go on and on, and maybe I will later. So maybe the documentary was successful, since it got me and my friends talking. For all the wrong reasons, mind you. The thing is, I cannot understand how so many educated people who have supposedly seen a lot of films and who should have some kind of film background could actually shower this film with such praise. I want to walk up to Brian Johnson of Macleans (who works in my office building, so this could actually happen) and say "Come on, you must know that the film wasn't actually that good. You must understand that it was difficult to sit through at points." I wish that people would just tell the truth, without having some other mandate.

When the film ended, nobody clapped. Nobody cheered. It was eerily silent. And not because it was "mesmerizing" or "hallucinogenic", but because - I think - everyone was baffled at how unbelievably mediocre and/or bad it was (truly!) after hearing about how unbelievably amazing it was.

I personally know four people who walked out before it ended.

After three hours the audience clapped for almost ten minutes. And although I am an expert at sitting through long film screenings, I rarely find myself thinking that I could have seen more. In the case of "Gambling, Gods and LSD" I could have floated through another hour at least. This is a film that makes you think; a visual essay on the interconnectedness of life on earth as we all search for answers, thrills and inner peace. Mettler spent almost ten years collecting the experiences of North Americans, Europeans and Asians and reorganizing them into a symbiotic work of almost religious attitude. And although the film is categorized a "documentary", "Gambling, Gods & LSD" is far from recalling the instructional movies of driving class or the nature films from grade four. With no narration and only the barest of precept, Mettler's piece recalls not only the visuals of "Baraka" or "Koyaanisqatsi" but structurally brings to mind the greatest work of Chris Marker or Agnes Varda's brilliant "The Gleaners and I". The sound work is also incredible. The importance of silence is rarely so well explored as in this film and the music is both overwhelming and introspective. Highly recommended for those who tire of the pedantic television-style documentary that has permeated our consciousness of late; "Gambling, Gods & LSD" is a film that leaves the audience to make their own story out of what they have just experienced.

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.

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.