Water

I don't know that I ever actually understood what the phrase "voodoo economics" really meant. But I think I have just encountered "voodoo chemistry" in this 2006 Russian film Water, and the result looks an awful lot like a TV infomercial. Do not come to this movie expecting a doom-and-gloom forecast about ecological catastrophe: Apart from an overstimulated four-minute short from Leonardo DiCaprio about the protection of our water supply that precedes the feature, Water contributes little to the universal conversation about the water crisis. In fact, the movie would probably like us to consume even more water than we already do – just not the stuff that comes out of the tap in the industrialized world but rather "structurized water" that has been cleansed of its weakened molecular structure and has the power to alter the physical structure of those who drink it. (The preferred water is probably H2Om Water With Intention – pronounced H-2-Ommm, like the mantra – which is thanked in the end credits and is undergoing a recent marketing push in Southern and Pacific Whole Foods stores.) I'm in no position to judge the validity of the science presented in Water, but the material raises many questions that it does not even try to answer and features a panoply of speakers whose credentials range from Nobel Prize winners to ordinary theologians. The film's entire approach to the chemistry of water is metaphysical, and if it reminds you of the approach to quantum physics of another movie, What the #$*! Do We Know!?, the resemblance is more than coincidental. Intention Media Inc., the American distributor of this English-language version of Water, is headed by Betsy Chasse and Melissa Henderson, What the #$*!'s co-director and chief marketer, respectively. Also returning from that 2004 surprise sleeper is scientist Masaru Emoto, whose photographs of water show the effects of different words on the substance's molecular structure. Words like "love" and "gratitude" make pretty images, as does the music of Bach and Mozart; heavy metal music warps water's crystalline shapes, as do words of hate and animus. Water also recognizes and responds to personalities: According to the film, speaking the names Mother Teresa or Adolf Hitler to a glass of water evokes two drastically different patterns. There is no rigor to any of the "science" presented here: We have no idea if there are any controls in these experiments or how many contradictory results have been quashed. However, by the time the experts are making such pronouncements as "water can lose its mind" and Jesus had an "informational influence" on the water he parted, you can be sure we're not strictly in the confines of the laboratory anymore. The images created by Russian filmmakers are deft and often beautiful, like a series of transformative Kirlian photographs on a substance widely taken for granted. Like a Kirlian photograph, there's an aura that surrounds this movie too: It's the shape water adopts when confronted with hucksterism.