Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives

Actually, you can watch this documentary online. I’ll even embed it here, so go nuts because it’s great and relatively short (one hour).

PARALLEL WORLDS, PARALLEL LIVES from EELS on Vimeo.

If it’s not working or if you’d prefer to know what the documentary is about before getting into it, I’ll tell you. It’s about Mark Oliver Everett’s quest to find out more about his father. That’s a pretty standard storyline, but in this case Mark is the founder of the rock band The EELS (one of my all-time favorites), and his father was a quantum physicist who came up with the theory of parallel universes. Seriously. It’s a strange concept but its results are excellent and entertaining. And you may even learn something.

Mark Oliver Everett, better known as “Mr. E” or simply “E,” contemplates the mysteries of physics.

Oh, and by the way, today The EELS came out with a new album. From what I’ve heard of it, it’s quite good. And at least while I’m writing this, it’s available to download from Amazon for only $5 here. You can also stream it on the band’s site.

I give the movie a 16/17 for soundtrack (using almost exclusively EELS songs), a 13/17 for thought-provokingness (it’ll take me longer than an hour to understand quantum physics, apparently), and a 15/17 overall.

Waltz With Bashir

Here’s yet another movie from my “List of Movies to Check Out,” but like so many entries, I have no idea where I heard about it. It could have been a recommendation from a trusted friend, or I may have written a note only containing the movie’s title, simply because I read an article in National Geographic that said the movie mentioned Lebanon. The world will never know the mysterious ways of my “List of Movies to Check Out.”

The world may also never know exactly what happened during the events that this movie depicts. It’s an Israeli movie, told from an interesting perspective. All the people in the movie are real (or at least composites), and it’s all based on real events. But the main character (and the movie-maker) has forgotten his memories of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. This is critical, since he thinks he may have taken part in a massacre of Lebanese civilians. This concern leads him to interview friends and other soldiers that were with him in the early 80s to see what they remember. Adding to the film’s unique perspective, the whole movie except the last two minutes or so is animated in a “looks like Rotoscope but isn’t Rotoscope” effect.

The movie gets a bit surreal at times. Unless a giant naked blue woman carrying off one of the main characters doesn’t count as “surreal” these days.

The movie is engrossing despite its often disturbing subject matter (and implications). I’d give it a 17/17 for originality (at least for me), a 15/16 for thought-provokingness, and an overall score of 15/17.

Devil’s Playground

First of all, it seems that there are about a dozen or so movies with this same title, although most of the others look a lot more messed up than this one. This is the one about the Rumspringa, the Amish rite of passage in which the community allows their youth to live like “English” (non-Amish) people for a while, normally for a year or two. During that time, the kids can dress how they like, do what they want, use electricity, date, and do all sorts of other things that aren’t allowed in the Amish community. The idea is that there shouldn’t be compulsion to get baptized, and that it should be each member’s own free choice. Of course, that choice can’t be made until they’re mature, hence the Rumspringa.

It’s a pretty cool idea, if you ask me, and I learned a lot more about the Amish than I ever thought I would. The movie also dispelled a lot of misconceptions I had about them (once you see an Amish teenager who sells crack, you also might experience a paradigm shift). This movie clocks in at about an hour and a half, so you should be able to add it to your next documentary marathon with no sweat.

For the Special Achievement in Bonnets and Beards category, I award this film a 17/17. For thought-provokingness, I give it a respectable 15/17, which means that its overall score works out to about a 15/17.

That’s it from me, at least for now. Has anyone else seen any of these, or does anyone have any good documentaries to recommend? It’s kind of fun to go on a “Docu-bender” now and then.

Thanks for reading!