Flashes of Panic

A and I went to see Peaceful Warrior tonight. I knew very little about the film going in, just a quick synopsis; I picked it because it looked like it might be both entertaining and interesting, and because it was showing at the right time.

If you had to pin this to one of those “X meets Y” formulas, this would be, “The Karate Kid meets Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” This is not entirely a bad thing—I like both titles, though the Karate Kid is getting kitschier as it gets older—but the movie also inherits a certain amount of the tail-chasing “just trust me, this works—and if it doesn’t work, it’s because you didn’t trust me” logic of Seagull.

Quick synopsis is that national-caliber Berkeley gymnast Dan Millman is trying to improve; he wants to make the Olympic Team. He meets an old man who does some impressive, almost supernatural things which Millman can’t understand; he wants to learn this.

For large sections of the movie, Millman almost seems like everyone’s spiritual punching bag. Everything he guesses is wrong. When he manages to get a grip on some of what he’s being taught, and applies it with spectacular results in the gym, he’s elated, but then berated for gloating about it. It’s like spiritual boot camp, and oh, does he ever break down.

The core of the message, is so common-sense it’s almost cliché: Are you happy? What do you believe is going to make you happy? Are you chasing a destination or enjoying a journey? Or, as in the last scene, Millman hears the questions: Where are you? Here. What time is it? Now. What are you? Less obvious is the question: if what you’re doing isn’t making you happy, why not? Where does the love come from?

Like Millman, the movie pitches a lot of questions. Like his mentor, who he calls Socrates, it tends to give only one answer: I don’t have the answers, they’re in you.

Now Playing: We Walk In The Dream from The Distance To Here by Live