The Message of the Celestine Prophecy Movie

I believe that most everyone who came of age in the last few decades is a movie fan. Why? Because in those decades the art of movie making reached its peak. Certainly lovers of vintage films might argue with me on this, believing that older films are better and that the recent age of blockbusters and visual effects have ruined the art, accounting for what is undeniably a downturn in movie attendance.

But I would retort that in spite of this downturn, film has reached an incredible effectiveness for what movies do best -- sweep an audience into an alternative reality for several hours.

What has been dished out in the last twenty-five years have been poignant explorations, realistic enough to be believed, of different ways of looking at the world. From the stark world of Blade Runner to the expanded cosmos of Close Encounters of the Third Kind to the way Jaws ruined the beaches for us, movies have had a lasting effect. And its not just mental, it's our very ethos that's affected.

Everyone knows that going to a film, being exposed to a different reality, leaves us, as we walk out the door afterward, still somehow in that reality. If the film was scary or violent, we warily check the crowd for danger automatically until we shake it off and return to our normal sense of things. On the other hand, if the movie was inspiring or imparts a new way of looking at life that is positive in its effect, then we want to savor the moment.

Have visual effects become bad replacements for good stories here in the 21st century? Certainly. But it isn't the fault of the medium itself, because we now have all the ingredients to serve up a platter of alternative reality that can stretch us in the ways that we want.

I believe that the downturn in movie attendance is happening chiefly because just excitement or alternative realities are not what we want any longer. What we desire, at this moment of history, is to explore subjects that touch our own deeper consciousness -- meaning we want stories that give us true- to-experience demonstrations of what it feels like to perceive the world in a fuller way -- a way that smacks true to our own intimations of where the human world can best evolve.

Such attitudes, I believe, are responsible for the upsurge in spiritual films, some large, some small, and is certainly what The Celestine Prophecy Movie is all about. The plot, the conversation, the hidden connections to the past, are all part of a whole that points to an expanded awareness of life's deeper meaning. It speaks to why evolution has carried us this far, the creation behind this evolution, and how we might become part of this magic flow as we make a contribution with our own lives.

The Celestine Prophecy Movie does indeed penetrate the viewer's consciousness, leaving us with a shift in how the world feels and looks . . . something lights up, a memory, that we can carry with us into the future.