James Redfield’s best-selling novel “The Celestine Prophecy,” a New Age take on spirituality by way of a political thriller, makes the leap from publishing phenomenon to big-screen indie drama.
If the preview screening is any indication, Redfield’s fans will rejoice, if only to see the beloved novel illustrated on the screen, no matter how tediously. The rest of us probably should stay away. Redfield’s story seems to lose something in the hamfisted translation.
Matthew Settle is John, the everyman skeptic drawn by fatelike coincidences to Peru and into the struggle over a collection of ancient scrolls that offer a prophecy about the evolution of man’s consciousness.
John joins the rescue of the “heretical” documents from both the Catholic Church, which wants them suppressed, and a vague conspiracy of secular power-brokers (manifest in the reliably menacing Jurgen Prochnow) who want them destroyed.
Former horror director turned anonymous TV veteran Armand Mastroianni gives it all the credence of a B-movie potboiler while his cast comes off as patronizing as they turn every stilted conversation into a lecture. The vibrant jungle locations and breathtaking ruins promised in the stunning establishing shots are lost in the drab photography, and visualizations of auras and visions are banal.
John’s spiritual awakening is a combination of synchronicity, human energy, intuition, karma, positive thinking and human connectedness (think George Lucas’ “The Force” as a grass-roots movement).
It’s a healthy idea even without the metaphysical dimension, but the indifferent direction douses whatever conviction gave the novel its ardent following. You don’t need a prophecy to predict that this affected, arch New Age sermon won’t win any converts.
The film is being released in a city-by-city rollout, a barnstorming tradition all but extinct in the era of the saturation release.
“The Celestine Prophecy”
PG for some violence|1 hour, 39 minutes|DRAMA|Directed by Armand Mastroianni; based on James Redfield’s novel; starring Matthew Settle, Thomas Kretschmann, Sarah Wayne Callies, Annabeth Gish| At Starz FilmCenter
