Flash of genius

Jennifer Baichwal’s Act of God is a poetic
and profound documentary on people
struck by lightning

STORMY SUBJECT: Act of God

by MALCOLM FRASER

Jennifer Baichwal, who I’d call one of Canada’s most interesting documentarians if that didn’t seem like damning with faint praise, has previously brought us Let It Come Down (on writer Paul Bowles) and Manufactured Landscapes (on the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky) among other works. Her latest, Act of God, is a meditation on “the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning.” Though the subject is as peculiar as it sounds, the result is a deep and thought-provoking film.

Serving as unofficial narrators are novelist Paul Auster, who describes the affecting experience of seeing a friend killed by lightning as a young boy, and musician Fred Frith, whose neuro-psychologist brother subjects the guitarist to a brain scan while he’s noodling on his instrument. Though the Frith scenes have nothing to do with lightning on a surface level, Baichwal draws a parallel to the flashes of electrical activity detected in the improviser’s brain.

The attempt to measure and quantify the quintessentially unscientific activity of musical improvisation also ties into another theme of the film—the struggle to reconcile a rational understanding of the natural world with the random, symbolic and mythological nature of lightning strikes. While Auster and writer James O’Reilly, who was struck by lightning as a young man, make explicit their efforts to resist attaching a spiritual significance to the events, Baichwal also visits Mexican and Cuban peasants whose understanding of lightning is deeply tied to religious beliefs, as well as Dannion Brinkley, whose lightning strike transformed him from U.S. Marines killing machine to spiritual guide for dying veterans.

Though Act of God meanders somewhat despite its short running time (only 75 minutes), and is permeated by a sort of terminal vagueness, it’s hard to fault Baichwal for this, as the film is clearly intended to be long on questions, short on answers; it’s a kind of paean to agnosticism, to accepting the things that we don’t know and can’t understand. Full of profound insights as well as strangely beautiful imagery, it’s a great chance to set your mind wandering to deep thoughts, not to mention an unfortunately appropriate film for this stormy summer.

ACT OF GOD OPENS THIS FRIDAY,
JULY 17