Jack, having failed to get the nomination as the Democratic candidate for U.S. President, decides to visit his friend and former speech writer Thomas who is now a poet living in France. While touring Mont Saint-Michel they encounter Sonia, a physicist who has withdrawn from her field of laser research because her results were being used by the military. In short order the three are engaged in a conversation about the meaning of life and the salvation of the world.
Sonia does most of the talking, harping on the interconnectedness of all living things, arguing that a paradigm shift is needed if we are to address the world's problems. She rails against the mechanistic thinking of the past as being obsolete. As an example she cites how using the oscillations of a quartz crystal to tell time shows how far modern science has left mechanistic thinking behind. I didn't get this, since it seems to me that the behavior and analysis of a quartz crystal is just as subject to mechanistic laws as a pendulum clock. But that is just one thing I didn't get in this ponderous gabfest.
Many topics of current relevance are broached: the influence of money on politics, the degradation of the earth's environment, the unknowability of many things, the mysteries propounded by modern physics, the moral responsibilities of scientists, the disregard for preventive medicine, and so forth. This interaction between a visionary, a pragmatist, and a romantic could have been stimulating if it had been realized as a passionate conversation rather than a sequence of pontifications. I felt that I was being lectured to rather than eavesdropping on an engaging conversation.
The scenery around and on Mont Saint-Michel is nicely filmed.
I suppose you have to admire this for its good intentions, but I found myself frequently checking my (mechanical) watch.
Sonia does most of the talking, harping on the interconnectedness of all living things, arguing that a paradigm shift is needed if we are to address the world's problems. She rails against the mechanistic thinking of the past as being obsolete. As an example she cites how using the oscillations of a quartz crystal to tell time shows how far modern science has left mechanistic thinking behind. I didn't get this, since it seems to me that the behavior and analysis of a quartz crystal is just as subject to mechanistic laws as a pendulum clock. But that is just one thing I didn't get in this ponderous gabfest.
Many topics of current relevance are broached: the influence of money on politics, the degradation of the earth's environment, the unknowability of many things, the mysteries propounded by modern physics, the moral responsibilities of scientists, the disregard for preventive medicine, and so forth. This interaction between a visionary, a pragmatist, and a romantic could have been stimulating if it had been realized as a passionate conversation rather than a sequence of pontifications. I felt that I was being lectured to rather than eavesdropping on an engaging conversation.
The scenery around and on Mont Saint-Michel is nicely filmed.
I suppose you have to admire this for its good intentions, but I found myself frequently checking my (mechanical) watch.