Whole Life Times: Reviews

October 2007 | Art & Soul

Reviews

FILM

Zeitgeist
116 minutes
Zeitgeistmovie.com

Zeitgeist appeared on the Internet in June of this year. Since then, the anonymous documentary (whose only known collaborator, libertarian political activist and filmmaker Aaron Russo, died at the end of August) has received upwards of 3 million views — a number, at last glance, increasing daily by nearly 60,000. Granted, it’s not as many hits as a homemade music video called Barbie Girl: D, but it’s still enough for us to take notice.

Zeitgeist is divided into three parts and each of the three parts could easily be the subject of its own film — or, for that matter, a college course. The first, dubbed “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” is an elementary primer in the uncanny similarities between the New Testament and a number of older spiritual traditions. Virgin births on December 25th, stars in the east, three kings, working miracles and ascensions roughly 72 hours after being crucified are, it seems, a dime a dozen in history.

The first section ends with a voice-over explaining that religious myths are the myths upon which all others can flourish. This, then, is the less-than-seamless bridge the filmmaker(s?) build to the second act, “All The World’s a Stage.” Act two is a bit of a harder pill to swallow, not only because it takes us on a visual trip down 9/11-memory lane, but because it attempts to turn everything we have been told about that catastrophic day on its head. The film posits that 9/11 was an inside job. That the planes that rammed towers one and two could not alone have been responsible for the “pancake” fashion in which the buildings collapsed. That only some serious explosives could have collapsed the buildings in such a fashion.

If the first two parts of this film don’t have the audience jacked up and ready to fight the man, the final section, “Don’t Mind the Man Behind the Curtain,” will almost certainly do the trick. This section focuses on the molten core of America’s extraordinarily storied and complicated economic system — the Federal Reserve. Among other things, Zeitgeist suggests that it is the men behind the Fed — a secret society of sorts — who, inspired by their insatiable appetite for power and treasure, have orchestrated each of America’s economic collapses and pupeteered the country into war again and again over the past one hundred years. Their ultimate goal: to create a global government and rule, absolutely.

While the ideas posited in Zeitgeist may be, and remain, on the fringe, the film is more than worth the two hours it takes to watch. It can remind us that in a media-saturated society, which inspires less confidence than fear and less action than reaction, we must continually work to discern fact from fiction.— Eric Larson

MUSIC

Habib Koite
Afriki
(Cumbancha)

Habib Koite says he named his latest album in tribute to his homeland because so many of his countrymen risk their lives to move to Europe or America rather than developing their own soil. In his entire twenty-plus year career, Koite has been a constant champion of the African folk and griot traditions. He sings, beautifully, of farming and marriages, as much as the ways technology can evolve small villages. Most importantly, he plays from the heart — one that has inspired hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to buy his gorgeous, blues-based recordings. Afriki, with its brilliant guitar picking, balafons and talking drums, is not an evolution, but an extension of previous works. His ambassadorial role has created some of the most lucid and soulful blues music in the world today —an accolade that is strengthened with each new outing. — Derek Beres

Shantel
Disko Partizani
(Essay)

Gaetano Fabri
Nuit Tsigane: Gypsy Night at Le Divan Du Monde
(Crammed)

No two men have worked harder at bridging the blaring brass and complex percussion of Balkan music with global audiences than this talented pair. Shantel, whose famous Bucovina Club nights led to two compilations of the same name, emerges with this stunning and rich sequence of pop songs. While Balkan pop seems a new genre, his innate sense of groove and tasteful vocals (whether his or guests) ensure that all fourteen tracks unite the Western 4/4 rhythmic landscape with every smidgeon of integrity Balkan blows and strings are famous for. While more eclectic and, at times, abstract, Fabri produces a romping four-on-the-floor remix of Fanfare Ciocarlia’s already danceable “Alili,” as well as a stellar, minimalist take of Balkan Beat Box’s “Adir Adirim.” His “poppier” tracks do not hold the same weight, however. Undoubtedly, Shantel’s “Disko Partizani” is bound to be honored as one of the most ingenious pop songs of all time. — D.B.

BOOKS

The World Without Us
by Alan Weisman
(Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press)

Most of the doomsday scenarios we see in films and on TV end with the passing of the human race, as though our extinction would be the end of the story of planet Earth. Of course, this isn’t true; humanity isn’t essential for our planet to survive, any more than the Dodo was. In The World Without Us, Weisman, a frequent contributor to Harper’s, Atlantic, and the New York Times Magazine, has created a sort of doomsday epilogue, imagining what would happen to Earth if every human being suddenly vanished all at once.

If you think this means that The World Without Us is depressing, think again: this book is full of glorious life — grass bursting through concrete, animals reclaiming space that once belonged to them and rivers running free from control. Weisman also studies areas like Chernobyl, where life is slowly returning, and the Kingman Reef, where almost no human has ever been before, to learn what lessons they have about sustaining our life as a species.

In the end, of course, the whole book is a thought exercise, a consideration of whether the environmental damage that we’ve caused has injured the planet irreparably. The conclusions that Weisman draws are optimistic — planetary life, in one form or another, will survive virtually any crisis we could create. The World Without Us is one of the most compelling books you’ll read this year, and a marvelous page-turner that puts our place on earth as a species in welcome perspective.— Paul Constant

Building the Green Economy: Success Stories From the Grass Roots
By Kevin Danaher, Shannon Biggs and Jason Mark.
(PoliPointPress)

Virtually everyone understands that we’re on the verge of creating a green economy in the United States. The real question is: what will this economy look like? Will it resemble a preexisting economy — the multi-tiered computer industry, for instance — or will it be something completely new? Building the Green Economy explores the roots of the new movement, and provides a wide-angle view of the very near future.

This collection of news reports and interviews sketches out the many faces of the economy. Unlike virtually every other major business force in the post-industrial United States, the environmental economy is starting locally and expanding into a national and international force. Each of the brief chapters covers a specific topic — for instance, urban farming — followed by a conversation with a great eco-thinker — an expert on international water supplies or a crusader for environmental justice — to give a clear concept of the many conventional ideas that have to change to make way for this new evolution of the business world.

This book is a must-have if you own a business, are considering a new career, or are simply curious about what the future will bring. From a discussion of race and environmentalism with Van Jones to a well-written story about an Oregon-based conservation group that found tremendous success when it incorporated communities into its mission statement, it’s a visionary look at what’s next. In the nascent days of the green economy, this book is an encylopedaic study of the playing field. — P.C.

The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13 and the Source Family
By Isis Aquarian with Electricity Aquarian,
Introduction by Erik Davis

Because the New Age movement faces so much outsider ridicule, many of its most fascinating stories continue to go untold. So it’s more than a welcome relief to receive the extraordinary and downright magical tale of health food entrepreneur-turned-religious-leader James Edward Baker, aka Father Yod, and his devoted followers, the Source Family. Buoyed by the success of Yod’s West Hollywood health food restaurant, The Source (immortalized by Woody Allen in Annie Hall ), Yod’s acolytes and employees embraced homeschooling, home births and independent distribution for their psych-rock musical offshoot Ya Ho Wa 13 at a time when such behaviors weren’t just unpracticed, but in some cases illegal. Isis Aquarian, one of Yod’s 13 “spiritual partners,” writes with enduring love about her former mentor, but wisely allows other voices within the Family to offer criticism and insight throughout. By book’s end, the reader sees Yod as both, in his own words, “a man [merely] trying to understand God,” and a deliriously charismatic leader who epitomized a transformative cultural moment in history. — Justin B. Hampton

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