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Do you know what you believe, or do you believe what you know?

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You’ve never seen a movie like this one, and you’re not likely to again. What the #$*! Do We Know? takes on the biggest questions and the smallest, like What is Reality? and How come I hate weddings? and gives answers to none, then it gives answers to all of them. Then it tells you that the answers don’t matter, only the questions count; then you find out the wrong questions are the right ones and vice versa, but you can’t understand the answers because you don’t understand the questions. Paradoxically, this movie is both pointless and meaningful, superficial and deep, because it addresses the unknowable in a most entertaining way.

Academy Award winner Marlee Matlin plays Amanda, a professional photographer whose life has gone off the cliff since discovering her husband being less than faithful with one of the guests from her wedding, and their subsequent divorce. Her inability to understand her life, or life in general, leaves her going through the motions of her work, her relationships with friends, and everything around her, acting the parts she believes she is expected to play by the world.

As she passes by a park on her way to work, she is rather persistently invited to join a boy called Reggie (Robert Bailey, Jr.) in shooting some hoops. Like Alice in Wonderland, Reggie’s court is another world, and when Amanda steps onto it, her perceptions of reality and reality itself begin to alter. Eventually Reggie asks her, “How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?” But Amanda doesn’t really have a choice; she’s already begun to experience the hidden quantum existence beneath her ordinary life.

Amanda’s story is intercut with a series of scenes in which scientists, psychologists, quantum physicists, mystics, and metaphysicians discuss their ideas on reality and perception. Spectacular computer generated graphics lightheartedly illustrate the physical mechanisms of emotions and intellect, and act out Amanda’s own experiences as her life begins to rearrange itself through her expanding understanding of it. Despite difficulties and having to face the idea that the facts of her life aren’t facts at all, Amanda comes to accept a new way of seeing herself and her world, and finally realizes that her happiness is not an external thing as she once thought, but is instead a potential inside herself, available as she chooses to create it.

What the #$*! (pronounced “Bleep”) is a novel exploration of the nature of reality, and while it asks as many questions as it may seem to answer, perhaps one of its greatest contributions to understanding is found when looking at it in retrospect. Just as Amanda perceived her world according to her own understanding at various points in her experience, so the film has its own perspective. What the #$*! posits the concept that we only truly exist in a virtual reality of perception, through the intermediation of our senses, chemistry, and memories. Then the film asks, since that is so, why not make the best of it? But it also says that through altering our perceptions, our virtual reality, we can effect actual changes in the physical world. Would that be some nonvirtual external world, perhaps one that somehow generates the stimuli that create our perceived world? Is perception reality or do we perceive reality?

Whether you are relatively new to these concepts or have been working with them for some time, What the #$*! provides a provocative look at some of the oldest and newest ideas that humanity has struggled with over the millennia. This is another of its appeals; there is something here for practically everyone, including the Stephen Hawking fans. The film is by no means an exhaustive exploration of even one of these concepts, but rather combines an incredible diversity of related thoughts in ways sometimes obvious, but just as often startling. Kind of like real life, if there is such a thing.

But you can see it for yourself, and I recommend you do so. If the reception in Chicago and Milwaukee is anything like what the film has experienced elsewhere around the country, you will have ample opportunity to view it more than once—from initial limited engagements, it has been held over for weeks afterward as word has spread from those who have experienced it.

What the #$*! is scheduled to screen in both areas in September, and discussion groups are already planned in Milwaukee, while Dr. Masaru Emoto, whose work with water is featured in the film, will be appearing at the Congress Theatre in Chicago. (See the Pulse Calendar pages and Transitions Bookplace advertisement in this issue.) Meanwhile, you can visit the website, www.whatthebleep.com, for a sneak preview, background on the production and actors, and other interesting things. Readers of this magazine will recognize Fred Alan Wolf and John Hagelin, two of the film’s contributors who have been featured in past issues of The Monthly Aspectarian.

What the #$*! Do We Know? A film by William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, and Mark Vicente. Starring Marlee Matlin, Elaine Hendrix, Robert Bailey, Jr., Barry Newman. 108 minutes, not rated (contains brief sexual scenes and language).

Loews Esquire on September 10, 2004, 58 East Oak Street, Chicago, IL 60611, show times and tickets, phone: 312-280-1205. Landmark Downer Theatre on September 24, 2004, 2589 North Downer Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53211, phone: 414-276-8711. A 150-screen nationwide release is also planned for September.

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