THE CELESTINE PROPHECY (2006) *** I liked the novel. I didn't get quite as much out of it as a lot of people seem to, but it was good. There are a lot of reasons that a novel can be successful, artistically. The main reason, for me, that James Redfield's book works so well is that he's masterful in presenting the most established fundamentals of New Age metaphysics (not contradictions in terms, no; much of New Age predates antiquity) in a way that is easy to understand, and much more interesting than a textbook. Not such an easy trick in the more visual medium of film, I think, but they do a good job of catching the spirit of the thing. Philosophical depth and development is necessarily sacrificed to action, which is kind of funny in a way. I didn't recall so much action and violence from the book-not because it wasn't there, but because its portrayal was so secondary, and not particularly memorable anyway. There are plenty of things to complain about-in the book and much more so the film-but they're all appropriate in their own way. Casting Matthew Settle in the lead, for instance, should have spelled instant doom. His awkwardness isn't as appealing as others have made the trait (Hugh Grant), and he's neither a particularly charismatic sort nor someone that most people can identify with. But he is a sort of New Age everyman: it's not difficult to imagine him in some book shop in Santa Monica standing by astounded at everything that anyone is saying at him. I'm not saying that Redfield is preaching to the naïve or stupid, but I am saying that people with certain traits are going to be more inclined to make this sort of thing a central premise of their existenz. Redfield did well to keep this film away from Hollywood types, they would have no doubt got part of it and blown the entire balance out of whack through magnification. I've enjoyed the entire Celestine Prophecy phenomenon: it's a cultural marker, maybe, more than a landmark. It reminds me of those early drawings of aeroplanes, I guess, when the alchemists endowed them with feathers. You are in the midst of a cosmic drama and nothing happens by chance.
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