Written by Vickie
August 28, 2009
Is there more to yoga than just contorting your body and stretching your muscles? Can you actually change and evolve as a human being by practicing it? Finding the answers to those questions is the mission of director Kate Churchill who, unfortunately, undermines her own film by dropping herself into it.
Churchill, a yoga aficionado, sets out to “prove” that the answers to both questions, and many more dealing with the spiritual nature of yoga, is “yes” by enlisting skeptic Nick Rosen – a journalist who reminded me somewhat of Steve Carell and didn’t really seem overly skeptical – on a six-month investigative journey. Nick begins by attending yoga classes being led by teachers of varying quirkiness, and attempts to understand the postures as much as the posturing during this process. But it becomes repetitive and decidedly un-enlightening for the audience pretty quickly, because how many times can you watch someone flop around on a yoga mat and make faces at the camera before it gets boring? Even a pit-stop with former pro wrestler Diamond Dallas Page, who extols the virtues of his T&A-driven “yoga for regular guys,” smacks more of novelty than anything else.
The duo then set out to far-flung destinations like Hawaii and India to consult with assorted gurus and to uncover the more spiritual side of an ancient practice that’s become hugely commercialized in North America. One after another, these legends of yoga offer their opinions and beliefs – sometimes seemingly in agreement, sometimes with differing views – as Nick sits, absorbs and, in my opinion, actually gets in the way of some otherwise thoughtful, insightful commentary.
Equally distracting is Churchill herself, who not only decides from the get-go what she wants the results of this experiment to be, but bookends the film with vignettes of herself and pops up occasionally throughout to bicker with her subject in what actually felt strangely like scripted or staged exchanges intended to add manufactured conflict. After all, how interesting would the documentary be if Nick became an immediate convert after month one? Unlike many documentary filmmakers, Churchill feels the need to be a participant rather than a silent observer, which made me wonder whether the film was really about Nick and his process, after all.
Despite some occasionally sage words from wise people, Enlighten Up! does little to actually enlighten anyone, onscreen or off, about the true benefits of yoga. It just sort of waffles around its central hypothesis, provides some nice travel footage and never really comes to any conclusions one way or another.
