Mindwalk

Bernt Amadeus Capra's 1991 film consists almost entirely of talk. Three people meet at Mont Saint-Michel: a politician who lost an election, a poet who has withdrawn from politics and a physicist who left weapons research. They walk the island for a day and argue about how the habit of understanding the world by breaking it into parts was established. The physicist holds that the mechanical worldview must give way to relations between systems; the politician says such thinking is useless at the moment of deciding. The film rests on the ideas in Fritjof Capra's book, and the director is his brother. There is almost no film language: the camera follows whoever is speaking and no plot is built. As such it is less a film than a filmed argument. Who it's for: viewers who like arguments about ideas and the philosophy of science. Who it's not for: anyone looking for story and character; the film offers neither.