20130825: Documentary Review--Sacred Science

The Sacred Science

1. Documentary live action feature length film, NR, 76 minutes, 2011,
2. IMDB: 7.2/10.0 on 21 user ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and no audience ratings at all.
4. Filmed in the USA, then in Peru for the treatments and interviews with the medicine men; this was to be a 30 day experiment.
5. Eight volunteers went with the film maker to find cures in the Amazonian jungle.
6. Five found cures (hm), two did not, and one died in the jungle.
7. Garry Thompson -- neural endocrine cancer; even if the treatments succeed completely, he'll be addicted to the treatment, at 1,000 USD/month.
8. Nicola Dale -- Parkinson's disease; wanted to stop the drugs, and hopefully get the symptoms to back off.
9. Juan Orraca-- alcoholism/depression
10. Melinda Elliott-- breast cancer
11. Gretchen Stacey-- irritable bowel syndrome
12. Joel Davis-- type II diabetes
13. Jessica Stenis-- Crohn's disease
14. John Wood-- prostate cancer
15. One needs to (a) find a relevant shaman (b) form some sort of relationship with the shaman (c) discuss (d) use medicines and listen to chanting (e) iterate c and d.
16. The medicine men dressed and acted pretty much like everyone else these days.  They use some modern appliances (refrigerators, for example) if they had electricity.
17. Ayahuasca use.  One of the medicine men portrayed it as the sovereign specific.  That is, it can cure anything.  The film started to lose me at that point.  However, other herbal preparations were used tailored for the individual needs.
18. There seemed to be endless searching for the medicinal plants.
19. There were recurrent check-ups from traditional doctors/nurses who were sympathetic to the approach of the shamans.
20. Joel left after ten days, since all the symptoms of diabetes were gone.  The shaman sent him off with dietary restrictions and the continued connection of sending medicines.  He remained free of type II diabetes.
21. Garry died in the middle of the night, and was buried locally the next day.
22. Nicola, toward the end of the 30 days, was off her medications and had greatly increased range of motion for her limbs.  She stayed an additional 30 days, and her ability to do better (increased range of motion, fewer jerks) without medications stuck.
23. John had a 2.0 drop (7.5 => 5.5, normal range for age 60+) in his PSA (prostate specific antigen) reading.  Speaking of jungles, wikipedia PSA. After returning to Australia, John's PSA was read 'officially' as 5.3, to his physician's surprise.
24. Gretchen had all symptoms vanish.  Her primary Western physician said she had short-circuited years of therapy.
25. Juan apparently got his head straight, but still consults with the medicine men now and then.
26. Joel, Nicola, John, Gretchen, Juan found cures or significant improvement in symptoms.
27. Melinda, Jessica found no improvement; Jessica spent a second month in the jungle, still with no forward progress.
28. Garry died in the jungle.
29. Four stars of five, whether I view it as documentary or as science fiction.  Good writing and organization.

Cinematography:  8/10 Beautiful for the most part: sharp, well focused, and all the other technical considerations. Occasionally it was a bit dark for the interviews in the huts.  Some of the night scenes were ridiculously bad, as in Blair Witch bad.

Sound: 7/10 Sometimes too low to hear.

Acting: N/A At least on the face of it, there was not any acting involved here.

Screenplay: 8/10 The logical progression seemed good, and the check-pointing with Western doctors seemed to verify progress.  The followups at the end of the film were a nice touch.  The fact that five of eight were successes, but three were not was also a sign that this was intended to be a fair experiment.