Kate Churchill’s breezy, informal documentary sets up a completely artificial situation to document. The filmmaker, a seven-year yoga practitioner, or in other words a bare tyro, wants to test the transformative powers of the practice, picks as a guinea pig a photogenic newbie of the opposite sex (a self-described “godless guy from New York City”), and lays out for him a round-the-globe smorgasbord of yoga disciplines: a healthier sort of Super Size Me. The gathered evidence, we can see right off the bat, is going to be not just anecdotal, but a single, extended, meaningless anecdote. Constantly checking to see whether a transformation is taking place (“I don’t expect any earth-shattering changes,” predicts the skeptical subject) scarcely seems conducive to transformation. And no seeker is likely to find out how far he can progress on a path when he keeps jumping to a new path after every few paces. What Churchill ends up documenting more than anything else is modern American restlessness, her own included. Nevertheless, we vicariously encounter a number of gurus, some of whom are surely the real deal and others of whom are surely not. To watch our complacent hardhead make the rounds is to feel a pang for the wasted opportunity and in particular for any envious spectator who would have cut off a toe to be in his shoes. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.