Enlighten Up
Jun. 5th, 2009 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreIn case you haven't noticed, I'm trying to post every day in June.
Tonight after work I went to see Enlighten Up, a documentary about yoga. I'd seen the trailer and thought it sounded interesting. The premise (director who has been practicing yoga for 7 years finds a yoga newbie and follows his experiences for 6 months) is an interesting one. But the execution was flawed, partly because I never got a real sense of why Nick (the newbie) was doing this and partly because it was obvious to me that Kate (the director) wanted Nick to have some sort of spiritual epiphany that he wasn't interested in.
I've always had some discomfort with the religious aspects of yoga and this movie reinforced them. That was probably Kate's bias towards spiritual seeking at work, since several of the gurus involved seemed to consider it acceptable for somebody to be looking for just the health aspects. Still, the approaches I found most appealing were the laugh club (where the participants make various motions and laugh and chant "ho ho ha ha ha") and the "Yoga for Real Guys," despite the sexism of the pro wrestler founder who said, "other yoga focuses on namaste, but we have t&a" and highlights the cleavage enhancing aspects of a posture one of the women in his class does.
All in all, this film seemed better suited to PBS than to the theatre. It wasn't terrible, but I was glad it was fairly short.
Tonight after work I went to see Enlighten Up, a documentary about yoga. I'd seen the trailer and thought it sounded interesting. The premise (director who has been practicing yoga for 7 years finds a yoga newbie and follows his experiences for 6 months) is an interesting one. But the execution was flawed, partly because I never got a real sense of why Nick (the newbie) was doing this and partly because it was obvious to me that Kate (the director) wanted Nick to have some sort of spiritual epiphany that he wasn't interested in.
I've always had some discomfort with the religious aspects of yoga and this movie reinforced them. That was probably Kate's bias towards spiritual seeking at work, since several of the gurus involved seemed to consider it acceptable for somebody to be looking for just the health aspects. Still, the approaches I found most appealing were the laugh club (where the participants make various motions and laugh and chant "ho ho ha ha ha") and the "Yoga for Real Guys," despite the sexism of the pro wrestler founder who said, "other yoga focuses on namaste, but we have t&a" and highlights the cleavage enhancing aspects of a posture one of the women in his class does.
All in all, this film seemed better suited to PBS than to the theatre. It wasn't terrible, but I was glad it was fairly short.
