Reviews of Spiritual Teachers
Here is a list of top spiritual movies. Though movies offer a powerful combination of music, story, and visuals, it’s rare they rise to become truly profound. If you force me to pick the best of the best spiritual movies, I recommend American Beauty, though I know Kevin Spacey has recently fallen out of favor.
Star Trek: The Next Generation “The Inner Light” (Episode 25, Season 5, 1992)
If nostalgia is the language of the soul, then “The Inner Light” is the essential soul-uplifting episode of Star Trek TNG. Continue reading “Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Inner Light”
Fearless (1993)
Harrowing depiction of a jetliner crash, music from Gorecki’s Symphony No.3, the filmmaking skills of Peter Weir (Witness and Dead Poet’s Society), and the powerful story of one man’s transcendent experience make Fearless one of my favorites. Continue reading “Fearless: a transcendent Peter Weir film”
The Thin Red Line Review (1998)
Set during the American invasion of Japanese-held Guadalcanal, you will drift between the human and the ethereal in this transcendent film. At once beautiful and horrific, this Terrence Malick masterpiece hints at that which simultaneously threatens to destroy and liberate us. Continue reading “The Thin Red Line review: a transcendent film”
American Beauty (1999)
American Beauty offers the closest experience of a spiritual film expressing the feel of cosmic consciousness — the haunting plastic bag sequence and the accompanying dialogue by Ricky:
Ricky: It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing. And there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it, right? And this bag was just… dancing with me. Like a little kid beggin me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That’s the day I realized there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid ever.
Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember… I need to remember. Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it… and my heart is going to cave in.
Ansel Adams: An American Experience Documentary Film by Ric Burns (2002)
This top ten spiritual film had me captured with its description of a young Ansel Adams hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where he saw something that he spent the rest of his life trying to convey through his photographs:
I was suddenly arrested in the long, crunching path of the ridge by an exceedingly pointed awareness of the light. The moment I paused, the full impact of the mood was upon me. I saw more clearly than I’d ever seen before, the minute detail of the grasses, the small flotsam of the forest, the motion of the high clouds streaming above the peaks. I dreamed that for a moment, time stood quietly and the vision became but the shadow of an infinitely greater world, and I had within the grasp of consciousness a transcendental experience. Continue reading “Ansel Adams (Documentary): a top ten spiritual film”