With the aggressive title "Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action", the viewer is warned that this film is pushing a fuzzy agenda.
Myself, I felt that its message was very strongly being pushed on me, but at the same time I felt that the speaker had little idea what the message was.
The film has interesting documentary components. It's a collection of valuable videos of various protests and actions through time and across the globe. I suspect most of this material is available elsewhere. I'm not sure where else you could see it all in one place, so that has value.
But then there are interviews with folks regarding spiritual activism, or even spirituality, and strong assertions and conclusions are made. Such things are neither proved in the film, nor even defined. Or rather, defined in so many ways, there's not really an answer. It's just the usual loopiness that amounts to "it is what I say it is" and "because". The film never really bothers to identify what is spiritual about any of this, or why it would fail if there was no spirituality (probably because we know it wouldn't fail, despite the narrator's claims to the contrary).
As I see it, you can't get to community without jettisoning your indulgence of spirituality, which is ultimately a limiting thing, tending to isolate people into groups. Community is best achieved by dealing with the common reality that we all experience. The film didn't really address this at all.
The same spirituality that claims to have motivated these actions that I and the narrator appear to favour has also claimed responsibility for some of the worst crimes in the world's history, and continues today. This seems to be touched on very briefly, but not really given serious thought.
Spiritual folks, or those with certain favoured religions, wanting an easy re-affirmation of themselves will probably love this film. The rest of us won't.
Myself, I felt that its message was very strongly being pushed on me, but at the same time I felt that the speaker had little idea what the message was.
The film has interesting documentary components. It's a collection of valuable videos of various protests and actions through time and across the globe. I suspect most of this material is available elsewhere. I'm not sure where else you could see it all in one place, so that has value.
But then there are interviews with folks regarding spiritual activism, or even spirituality, and strong assertions and conclusions are made. Such things are neither proved in the film, nor even defined. Or rather, defined in so many ways, there's not really an answer. It's just the usual loopiness that amounts to "it is what I say it is" and "because". The film never really bothers to identify what is spiritual about any of this, or why it would fail if there was no spirituality (probably because we know it wouldn't fail, despite the narrator's claims to the contrary).
As I see it, you can't get to community without jettisoning your indulgence of spirituality, which is ultimately a limiting thing, tending to isolate people into groups. Community is best achieved by dealing with the common reality that we all experience. The film didn't really address this at all.
The same spirituality that claims to have motivated these actions that I and the narrator appear to favour has also claimed responsibility for some of the worst crimes in the world's history, and continues today. This seems to be touched on very briefly, but not really given serious thought.
Spiritual folks, or those with certain favoured religions, wanting an easy re-affirmation of themselves will probably love this film. The rest of us won't.