Customer Reviews

Carlos Castaneda - Enigma of a Sorcerer

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

This documentary is a travesty, especially considering this is the only one available on Castaneda, because by being the only one it may be the *definitive* one. Someone needs to make another Castaneda documentary just to set things right in some measure and do the man and his work justice.

First, when you put the DVD in, it forces you to watch a really old, bad looking documentary on corn (the sneak previews look even worse). In the first few minutes of the doc you get assailed by shifting, swirling, distorting images of the interviewees. It must be stressed how utterly cheap and amateurish the visual production of this movie is. It seems the guy did dig deep into his Windows 95 bag of screensaver/desktop theme tricks along with his early 80s commodore 64 sprite programs to come up with such a crappy look to the film. The film would have looked better with none of these visuals at all and probably would have cost the same to do so. It's not that I focus on the quality of visuals in movies, but you just can't help but notice how cheap this DVD's visuals are and how often they distract you from the interviews.

My main critique of this documentary is it deals almost exclusively with the man's life outside his writings and not with the all-important writings themselves. To achieve the documentary's aim would apparently be an enourmous feat to begin with since he led an ultra secretive life for many if not most of his years since his initial meeting with Don Juan. You'd have to have direct access to his inner circle of followers, women, friends etc, none of which this documentary has except with Amy Wallace. But she is only given equal time with everyone else, and what she has to say is (unfortunately) on par with everyone else. That is, an almost worthless musing about Castaneda. The most interesting thing I've heard Wallace say (not in this documentary) is the Don Juan character is actually a composite figure of several sorts of similar men Castaneda met throughout his life. While this is a fascinating theory, she never offers a shred of evidence for it here. Surely an anecdote of a Casteneda ecounter with another shaman would have been not only sound evidence but a great story in itself?

I was in a doctor's office recently with a copy of Taisha Abelar's "The Sorcerer's Crossing". A nurse struck up a conversation with me about it and I mentioned Castaneda. She said, "I heard that his writings actually weren't true". I think what gives rise to such vacant rumours are chatty documentaries like this. There are a couple of wormy, smug academics in the video who give explanations about why the Casteneda books aren't true. For instance, one critic says Don Juan is moody and aloof in the first book, yet gets happier and more open into the second and third books. To him, this clearly demonstrates a totally inconsistent personality and therefore indicates a fictitious character. You just want to reach into the TV and slap this petty little monkey. His arguments are so hollow, it's amazing they are even admitted into this documentary, especially without counterpoint.

When I first sat down to read Castaneda's first book "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way Of Knowledge", I was so riveted that I read on continuously for 6 hours to about page 162 before sleep compelled me to stop. That's about the best way I could describe how fascinating and awe inspiring the Castaneda books are. Within a year I had read his first 7 books. I've always felt that for me to try and describe Castaneda's books to someone asking would be an injustice because the books cover so much ground about the fascinating and nearly unbelievable latent powers all humans have that to try that to try encapsulate this would be futile.

At the end of the day, you realize that it's the Don Juan character and his teachings that's truly important about Castaneda's work - not Castaneda's sorcery abilities or that of any of his followers because they all seem to be light years behind Don Juan. So focus on the Castaneda books and forget this piece of [...] `documentary'.

This film seems to come from the mind of one man, who's name I (thankfully for him) forget. This "auteur" was evidently responsible for the relentless barrage of corny home video effects and endless electronica that passes itself off as a soundtrack in this embarassingly amateurish attempt at a documentary on the life and teachings of Carlos Castaneda.

It's too bad, because Castaneda is a superb subject for a documentary treatment. This just isn't it. Comprised of interviews with a number of ex-students, Castaneda, who refused to be photographed (there are only a few known photos of the man,) never appears on screen. We only hear his voice for a moment at the beginning and end of the film.

It's almost tragic that this piece is for all intents and purposes unwatchable , as one can sense there was some good material to work with here. Some of the people who knew Castaneda offer up fascinating insights into the life of this complex self made guru. A couple of ex-disciples are able to appreciate the value of the teachings of Don Juan, while at the same time acknowledging the whole affair was an elaborate hoax. This is the paradox of Castaneda, writer extraordinaire, trickster and charismatic myth maker.

But even the most candid reminisces and the most profound observations are wasted as we are relentlessly assaulted with a constant onslaught of mindless cliches in the form of puerile wipes and fades, not to mention painfully literal composite shots, all saturated with one corny 70's "psychedelic" video effect after another. It's an exhausting experience if you can make it all the way through this turkey. Just getting through the protracted credits is a chore. If there is such a thing as "eye candy", this must be the equivalant of eye diarrhea.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

This reviewer, who followed very closely the intellectually stimulating early works of Castenada back in the 70s (forget his later books where he finally goes over the edge) felt like puking after viewing this overpriced and worthless Sirius Bandits/Indican Pictures monstrosity. It doesn't matter what side you come down on relative to Castenada and his works. From ANY perspective, this cheap "documentary" is a total piece of crap; from the first unskippable, unavoidable 3-minute plus blurb on growing corn (or whatever, and having nothing to do with the main feature); to the 90-minutes of talking heads; with unremitting, nauseous, psychedelic imagery as the background; even to spilling into the foreground so that some of the talking heads become distorted and wavering as though even they are about ready to puke!

Avoid this rip-off whatever your views of Castenada, or you'll be sorry you didn't! And think twice before you ever buy anything from Indican Pictures or Sirius Bandits!

I bought this movie because I was interested in hearing a real interview with Castaneda and was lead to believe this DVD was a study of his work, perhaps from an anthropological perspective. Of course I expected some editorial on the relevance of his series, but what I got disgusted me.

First of all, the production value was TERRIBLE (read: flying panes of interviewees in psychedelic moving colors and cheesy windows 95 screensaver backgrounds - I could do a better job in my sleep and I don't even do video editing).

More importantly, this is an obvious grab for money and attention from those that have built their careers or lives on criticizing Castaneda's work. They throw around allegations of his making it up and "doing it for the money" / "doing it for the women". Who knew walking around in the desert, doing peyote with a Yaki Indian, and dedicating your life to writing accounts of your experiences got you women? Seems like a sort of lofty and difficult means to achieve the same end as maybe, oh I dunno, buying a Porsche.

People take the bible word for word as truth and that is perfectly acceptable to society despite ALL of the inconsistencies in the bible. After finishing the Castaneda collection, go back to the earlier work and be amazed at the consistency that is kept throughout. That alone speaks volumes of truth in the experience he had.

The only actual attempt at throwing out a factual reason why this experience was impossible, (as an biased majority allege) was made by an interviewee whose name I couldn't read due to all the patronizing "trip" effects, that Castaneda never received any mosquito bites while wondering the desert and therefore must have fabricated the whole anthropological study that had a strong forward by UCLA. OOKKKAAAYYYY.... Maybe he didn't write about it, maybe he was wearing deet, what the heck does that matter?

I could go on forever, but the bottom line is that no one, weather they value Castaneda's work or detest it, would consider this anything but a ploy for dollars and attention by people with little scholarly credit - at least in their presentation - if any. But if you look at it just the right way... it just proves Don Juan all the more correct. However only he could find a way to glen anything to learn from these petty tyrants and panderers to "specialness".

This movie is total crap. I have been to Tensegrity Workshops and listened to Carlos in person. I was hoping for more incite on what went on behind the scenes. No, I was not part of the "elite" group. What you get is someone's poor attempt to "cash" in on the Don Juan $$$$ wave. Watch the free clips at [...] and you will basically get the whole movie for free. Very disappointing and if you see a rating higher than 1 star (generous) it is because they somehow are profiting by you buying the video (I'll sell you my copy).

Having read all the bad reviews, my hopes were not exactly up regarding this documentary, but being someone who has been compelled to read all the books and everything else about Castaneda, I felt I needed to see this for myself. Probably due to the fact that my expectations were set so low, I actually did not mind seeing this. This DVD is a about a group of individuals who attended Castaneda's workshops/Sunday Sessions trying to make sense of his teachings after his passing. I found it interesting to hear their perspectives and yes I did hate the special effects. If you are a hard core Castaneda fan, you will enjoy hearing the famed man's voice.

the movie has nothing to do with Castaneda and his teaching. It is simply a sequence of very simple people expressing their oppinion about Castaneda, but those opinions again have nothing to do with Castaneda.....sounds more like gossiping.
Ruta

As the author of "Filming Castaneda: The Hunt for Magic and Reason" I was surprised and slightly amused to find my book linked to Ralph Torjan's film. Other than the use of Carlos Castaneda's name in the title there is no relationship between our projects. To clarify the misleading link for the unwitting reader: I was not involved in the making of this film. In fact, I chose not to participate in it, not as interviewee nor as supplier of the only video footage of the elusive writer.


Contrary to the implied relationship, my book deals with the actual secret filming of Carlos Castaneda and contains many supporting photographs selected from the seven hours of videotape I took together with my husband. It is the story of my personal experience spanning the last six years of Castaneda's life. During that time I had the privilege to see Castaneda from various perspectives. He was the autocratic teacher in his private classes, the hilariously funny and beguiling lecturer on stage, and the ordinary man living in Westwood. For more details look up my website FilmingCastaneda.com.

After Castaneda's death I realized that the story together with the video material as well as our friendly access to Castaneda's widow and his adoptive son could make a great documentary. There was a tenuous attempt between Ralph Torjan and myself about a possible collaboration on a film that naturally would also include portions of the footage. I knew Ralph from a movement practice group and always liked him. Yet Ralph's strong vision of a "sorceric" project that was to be under his sole creative control did not leave any room for my ideas of a less biased and more entertaining documentary film. My intuition prompted me to decline any participation in his project. And considering the result I have no regrets.

In the end we are the sum total of our doings and we will be faced by those doings at the moment of our death. Or is it our death in every moment that we live, that faces us with what we do? This was my immediate realization upon watching this film.

I could see every person was sincere from their perspective. The underlying message was that our death is stalking us at every moment, and this is what brought about the mystery and the sincerity from all the participants.

As was stated in the film, there is no future, there is no past, there is only the moment, but what they forgot to mention is that moment is continually escaping us as well. This is the lesson that death supplies. Everything that is and has been will escape us. So then there really is nothing we can cling to, and I think this is what the participants were struggling with.

There is no mistaking that Carlos Castaneda was a brilliant man.

The participants deserve 5 stars even though the production itself warrants only 3 stars. I believe that the participants were true within their sincerity upon the perplexity that was confronting them with Carlos.

Although there are a few minutes of interesting interviews, they are accompanied by pathetic nauseating graphics and weak embarrassing music. Most of the background graphics are actually generated by the iTunes default music visualizer. It is surprising that such a low quality product ever saw any distribution. It is an insult to the memory of a fascinating and compelling author and character. I rented it and will demand my money back. An annoying waste of time.