Gambling, Gods and LSD

Without a doubt, saying that this movie is dull is a sad misunderstanding. It is not a dynamic fiction nor a pre-digested documentary. Rather this is a reflection and invitation to join in and think. Thus, the slow pace is a delight as it enables one to explore the meanings of each sequences. More movies should have action less breaks. On this particular journey, Metller explores our fascination for an escape of this earthly condition and furthermore underlines our instinctive desire to gather in Unity. All people, all ethnics, whichever their means have their rites of communion. Mankind is seeking for happiness and fulfilment should it be through gatherings, drugs, vain hopes and even maybe intrinsic biological qualities. This movie exposes the dream of man to become fully united, to become god, eventual point of the evolution of biogenesis. This is one of the most intelligent movie I have yet seen. The images are beautiful and so is the score. A long slow dream in essence of Humanity.

This is a superb film, but Canadian writer-director Peter Mettler is a victim of his own dazzling vision: he covers a lot of intense psychological territory while he challenges us to look within ourselves. But (and here's the rub) he takes a whopping three hours to do it.

For viewers to really appreciate this work, it is mandatory to see it again, and again, and again. You could spend an entire 24-hour-day studying the intricacies of this film, and you'd still have enough questions to take you well into a second day.

The film has been compared to Godfrey Reggio's epic three-part series (Koyaanisquati, Powataqqatsi, and Nagoyqatsi), but GG&LSD is a very different work in that Mettler offers a cinematic narrative, a series of 'storylines,' while Reggio just flat-out floors you with perhaps the most relentlessly stunning photography ever committed to film.

We visit Toronto, the Nevada desert, Las Vegas, Switzerland and India. We see people who talk about psychic experiences, including (you guessed it) visitations with Jesus and God. We get to imagine what it's like to view building implosions in reverse; we see a man (a self-described 'scientist') who induces female orgasms by remote control; we hear about finite molecules drifting forever from one living organism to another, adopting new 'hosts' as they go, so that none of us ever really dies; we learn about LSD as a drug that liberates our dormant, long-repressed and 'unconscious' inner perceptions of existence itself; and we hear about other drugs like heroin that allegedly (and fleetingly) tend to do the same thing.

Mettler offers us a complicated excursion into the omnipresent mysticism of life and dares us to examine the received 'truths' all around us. What, he asks, is the actual reality of existence? When we dare to look beneath the surface, what does it really mean to be alive and human?

This is all fascinating material, but one quibble I have with Mettler goes something like this: the characters who walk us through these voyages come on the screen, they're interesting, we want to see more of them, and then -- zap -- they disappear, drift away, and we're introduced to somebody else. The transitions can be jarring. There are no resolutions with these characters. But maybe that's the point: in life, there are no real resolutions.

Mettler shot so much footage (he took three years to edit this), that perhaps it should have been a series, a la Reggio and his three epics.

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!

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 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.