by CHRIS BARRY

Canadian, experimental and three hours long. Try finding an endorsement for a film that’s worse than that. But when push comes to shove, Peter Mettler’s Gambling, Gods and LSD is actually a very respectable piece of work. One almost bordering on the profound, in fact.

Mettler has embarked on one motherfucker of an ambitious endeavour here. Eight years in the making, GGLSD is described in the promo hype as “a filmmaker’s inquiry into transcendence [which] becomes a three-hour trip across countries and cultures, interconnecting people, places and times.” A film where “fact joins with fantasy” and where “the search for meaning and the search for ecstasy begin to merge.” Like I said, it has all the ingredients to be one goddamned unbearable movie.

Yet in spite of the artistic dangers involved in approaching a subject as grandiose and ethereal as what is, essentially, the meaning of life, Mettler has managed to create a surprisingly subtle film, mercifully void of any pretentious rambling or the sort of bogus metaphors you might expect from a work such as this.

Mettler’s cinematic odyssey begins in a Toronto park near his boyhood home, with the filmmaker interviewing one of his junkie acquaintances about the search for life’s meaning and the effect opiates might have on one’s personal spiritual adventure—a theme touched upon several times in GGLSD. Does the junkie have any answers? Of course not, but neither does anyone else Mettler introduces us to in this film. Everyone has plenty of theories and questions though, some valid, some arguably ridiculous, but all communicated to the viewer honestly and with a refreshing lack of bias on behalf of the filmmaker.

As the film progresses, Mettler invites us to bear witness to an impassioned evangelical hootenanny along Toronto’s Pearson airport strip, the demolition of the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, a chemistry/philosophy lesson from LSD inventor Albert Hoffman, more junkies—this time of the Swiss variety—and an example of the coexistence of technology and divinity in contemporary India. All in the hope of making some sense of this nutty thing called human existence. But that’s just the half of it—this film is a whopping three hours long.

What makes GGLSD truly an achievement is that, in spite of the enormity of its thesis, Mettler has managed to remain admirably non-judgemental, allowing the viewer to come to their own conclusions with the text, to divine their own meaning from the experiences Mettler presents. And most viewers will indeed walk away from this film pondering some big ideas. God help us all.

Beautifully shot, this movie is probably not for the Saving Silverman crowd, and even the most dedicated filmgoer might find themselves starting to get a little antsy after the second hour or so, but Gambling, Gods and LSD is undoubtedly a superior piece of work. And with pictures as pretty as Mettler delivers here, who needs a traditional narrative anyway? :

Gambling, Gods and LSD opens Friday, Nov. 22 at the Parc

>> Movie Listings