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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
DOING TIME, DOING VIPASSANA
In India, it's not uncommon to see cows squatting outside the gates of an
upscale hotel or dirt-nosed street children tapping on the windows of
expensive cars. Israeli filmmakers Eilona Ariel and Ayelet Menahemi are
mesmerized by the stark and contrasting visual images that bombard the
senses in this South Asian country. In their film Doing Time, Doing
Vipassana, they introduce us to the effects of a meditation technique
called Vipassana with a scene of a prisoner crying like a child in the arms
of his guard.
In 1993, Kiran Bedi, the inspector general of prisons in India, was
searching for an effective reform to that country's brutal penal system. She
was desperate to find a solution, and in true karmic style, a chance meeting
with a prison guard led her to explore the technique of Vipassana. The film
takes us inside the walls of Tihar Prison, a maximum security facility on the
outskirts of New Delhi. It was here that Bedi implemented a 10-day Vipassana
course. The results were dramatic and went on to bring about a
psychological change within the prisoners. For the first time, many of them
felt a tinge of remorse for their crimes. A thousand more prisoners took the
course the following year.
How the courses are set up and the complications in taking on such a
mammoth project are explained. Candid interviews of Bedi and the prisoners
themselves illuminate the power of this technique. In a moving revelation,
one prisoner admits the course almost made his prison experience
worthwhile. And in another sequence, the filmmakers use a frenzied montage
of images to take us into the mind of a Vipassana student, allowing us a
glimpse of the force of this meditation. Though the pace of this 52-minute
film is somewhat slow, the content is revealing. Preeti Mankar
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