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'Bleep' goes deep to explore our realities
Marlee Matlin
Samuel Goldwyn
Director: Mark Vicente, Betsy Chasse, William Arntz.
Stars: Marlee Matlin, Barry Newman, Elaine Hendrix.
MPAA rating: Unrated but R in nature for language and sexual allusions.
If you were to address most of us for two hours on a subject we know -- say, Alfred Hitchcock or family members -- we'd absorb a fairly high ratio of the new information because we have a fund of facts and impressions to which we can attach it.
"Bleep" is something else. A background in philosophy, psychology and the physical sciences will help but isn't required. A rereading of one's own notes afterward can only help as a refresher after idea bombardment.
The film is like a Classics Illustrated primer on quantum physics.
Thirteen people, mostly academics and scientists, take recurring turns introducing one point or another.
Some issues are amplified in an ongoing story about Amanda (Marlee Matlin), a Portland, Ore., photographer who is in a perpetual bad mood until a child named Reggie (Robert Bailey Jr.) persuades her that sometimes you have to stop, exhale and shoot a few hoops.
Directed by Mark Vicente, Betsy Chasse and William Arntz and written by Arntz, Chasse and Matthew Hoffman, "Bleep" uses animation, talking heads and Matlin's awkwardly staged scenes to ask how we can continue to see the world as real if the self that is determining it to be real is intangible.
Do all realities exist simultaneously, or do all potentials exist side by side?
Why are we here? What is reality? Try to explain and you risk spiraling down through a befuddling tree trunk like Alice.
The brain processes much more information than we consciously grasp.
Matter may not exist at all, or it may exist in multiple places concurrently.
We affect whatever reality we perceive. We transform it from the instant of observation. What we "sense" about it is not necessarily what it is or all that it is.
Our perceptions begin with ingrained attitudes about ourselves, which we then apply throughout our lives unless we succeed in changing our scripts, which is what self-help and positive thinking are all about.
There's a lot of abstract discourse on God, a subtle dismissal of religion and not even a breath about faith. "Bleep" hints at an embrace of eastern philosophy.
But then, the film's credo is that we can't be sure of anything.
If that's not making too great an assumption.
