ALEX FARBA

By Alex Deleon

PHOTON

Photon is an extremely demanding (Intellectually) new Polish film about astrophysics, quantum theory, the evolution of molecular biology, the development of the brain, and finally a long term forecast of the future of mankind which reaches into the stages of large scale intersolar and intergalactic energy harvesting as propounded by physicist and futurologist Michio Kaku.  I enjoyed it thoroughly because these are all fields in which I have a depth backgtound, but I pity the poor ordinary film buffs who must have been highly befuddled.  The Polish director, Norman Leto, obviously knows his science and composed fantastic images to accompany and illustrate the highly refined and compressed ideas.

It was like a four year course in fundamental  scientific concepts compressed into a mind-bending (in the best sense of the word) fully packed couple of astounding hours.

Not for every taste but a major contribution to the "popularization" of essential cosmological snd evolutionary ideas.  

While basically directed  at people with a sound scientific background, others viewers without benefit of such a background but who are are willing to approach this uniquely didactic(and artistic)  film with an open mind and ordinary common sense, will find much of it visually and generally stimulating as well as highly informative. (In bits and pieces)

Before that I saw a most remarkable Iranian  film centering on an 80 Year old woman who lives alone in the mountains with her herd of cattle. Her eleven children don't give a shit about her but the cows do!

A film that Kiarostami would have loved. And so did I.

But, then again, Kiarostami is only for those with highly highly refined cinematic taste.

We can instantly create a "mind within the mind" and emerge in self-reflection...