Thirty four years ago, on this day, September 9th, 1990, an interesting film was released. It sounds like a joke set-up: a poet, a politician and a physicist walk around a monastery…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindwalk
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2024 it is 420ishppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Fritjof Capra was a bit of a star in New Age circles because he had a physics background and then to chuck it all in to be at the feet of Gregory Bateson and others. He had written The Turning Point, and so forth. And this film, directed by his brother is a rather interesting artefact. And it was an attempt to put these ideas to the test. I like the film. It has three significant speaking parts. There’s a poet, played by John Hurd, who’d already put on weight from the previous year’s The Package, Liv Ullman, as a Swedish nuclear physicist and Sam Waterson as a very thinly veiled Al Gore. These three meet at Mont St Michel and walk and talk.
What we learn is that it can be hard to translate relatively abstruse ideas into something that people will watch. But this is an entirely serviceable effort in my opinion, and you should get hold of it if you can.
What happened next Hurd went on to have a career that he thought was okay, but wasn’t as big as it could have been. Waterson has been around forever. Liv Ullman, I think is still alive. And Bent Capra never made another film; probably didn’t want to.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
September 9, 1947 – The Daily Worker talks about melting the ice-caps
September 9, 1971 – of Australian Prime Ministers and American scientists…