How They Ruined This Movie


One error makes the entire film unwatchable and at times laughable to me. People of various eastern cultures, move, act, respond, in certain manner. Everyone in this film moves and acts with thoroughly modern 20th century manners, hand gestures and fake Easterners with a 30's Fu Manchu camp ignorance. It is jarring and ridiculous. One thing G. knew about is subtleties of movement. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

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You are right that in movement, and also in speech, many of the multinational cast do not give a very convincing impression of the Middle East and Central Asia at the beginning of the twentieth century.

In defence, I would suggest that neither the characters nor the settings are meant to be taken literally. They are stages on an inner spiritual journey, where externals do not matter. We do not know if Gurdjieff went to the places and met the people he wrote about or even if they existed in the physical world.

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If you are satisfied with such a load of airy fairy crap as the basis of a 'spiritual' life welcome to it.

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