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AFF review: “The Spirit Molecule”
“The Spirit Molecule” asks a lot of weighty metaphysical questions that contemporary science, let alone a narrative documentary, are not equipped to answer. My first question: “Yeah? And?”
Psychiatrist Rick Strassman did research on the hallucinogenic compound DMT that allowed his study participants to take what’s described as “a psychedelic bungee jump” in which they see a consciousness greater than themselves. Is it God? Are our brains just cosmic radio receivers? If shamans and peoples in the Amazon rain forest use the stuff to alter the doors of perception, shouldn’t we pursue more research?
With interviews with scientists, writers, a rabbi and more, the film is by no means something about how groovy it is to get high. In other words, Dennis Hopper shouldn’t have narrated it, which he did not. But why Joe Rogan as our guide, in stuttery black and white footage that looks very much like those Dharma Initiative training films from “Lost?” That derivative gimmick undermines what, for the scientists, is a serious inquiry.
The effects are cool, though. Kind of like a cross between “2001” and a Tool video. But, again, where are we going with this? Does it mean we’re all part of something bigger we’re not evolved enough to understand? Is that why DMT tickles a gland at the center of our brain and gives us a peek at secrets of the universe? Is taking DMT “to touch the hand of God?”
A more pointed question: Why did Strassman stop his research in 1995 and why is this documentary written and directed by Mitch Schultz only now coming out? (If he answered that during the Q&A, sorry. It was freezing at the Austin Convention Center Sunday afternoon. We had to get outside, warm ourselves on a flat rock and ponder existence.)
You know that “Simpsons” episode where Homer ate the really hot chili pepper and all over a sudden a coyote or wolf was talking to him in Johnny Cash’s voice. Homer’s experience was every bit as legitimate as the ones of the participants in this film. But the TV show was playing it for laughs, knowing there’s really no way to know whether we’re chasing God or illumination or Buddha-hood — or whether it’s just chemicals in our brains taking us on an unknowable, enjoyable, mind-blowing ride.
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