Rating: Country: Russia Release Date: September 23, 2007 Distributor: Intention Media Director: · Saida Medvedeva · Anastaysia Popova · Julia Perkul Grade: C+

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Moses parted it. Peter walked on it. Jesus turned it into wine. But did these miraculous events have anything to do with the intention of the water itself? And could you bottle such water?

That's just a little of what's touched on in this film by Saida Medvedeva, the latest in the metaphysical "What the Bleep" series of documentaries from Intention Media.

Some of the discussion, in fact, has already been covered by the first "What the Bleep" film, followed up by a book documenting the work of Dr. Emoto Masaru, who did the initial experiments with water and intention. To nutshell the idea, the proposal is that water can carry impressions -- that it can be recorded upon like any other media, through the structuring of its basic H2O molecules. If this is true, and given that not only is over 70% of the planet covered in the stuff (and that living beings like us are made up of a fair amount of it ourselves), this could make Earth the largest computing device thus far discovered by man -- and would quite likely turn science fiction author Douglas Adams into a prophet!

Masaru's experiments involved beakers of water, to which he spoke or directed emotions. "Thank you." "Love." "You disgust me." Things of that nature. After a time, water from these beakers was extracted, frozen, and the crystalline structures analyzed under a microscope. Medvedeva herself explored the process for "Water."

"I decided to perform an experiment myself shooting it by camera," she writes. "One flask of water was put in a church during consecration. The second flask was kept outside the church. Then we brought these flasks to the laboratory of Leonid Izvekov in Moscow. He as not made aware what kind of water they contained. I and all the shooting crew saw it with our own eyes how the water taken from the church formed a beautiful crystal, while the regular water produced a mere blot. This was an inspiring moment for our team. At that instant, I came to believe that it would be beneficial to make a film about the properties of water, and this episode was later included into the film."

It's easy to scoff at the notions presented in "Water." Much of it sounds like New Age nonsense. But then, how do we reconcile the idea with the consecration of holy water by the Catholic church, that we say a grace of thanks over our meals, that Jesus sent a blind man to wash in a particular pool of water, and that the Bible makes mention numerous times of "living water?" And that's just within the scope of Christianity -- the idea that "there's something in the water" is a part of nearly all the world's religions.

On a purely scientific note, the questions become harder. For instance, are these experiments repeatable, by other researchers in other places? How do we know that what passes for an intention of, say, "peace" comes out the same from one person as it does another? Does my "love" look like your "love?" And, for that matter, does the same crystalline structure form each and every time even for the same experimenter? Does "hope" always look like "hope" every time it's tried? These are things left unaddressed in the film that could have gone a long way in convincing the masses.

And then there's the cynical contingent, who are not without their own merit for complaint. After all, Intention Media is releasing a film about water with intention imprinted on it. Could it be that the film is actually a cleverly marketed infomercial to the gullible for H2Om, bottled water that markets itself as "Water with Intention," particularly after all the film's talk of the healing properties of imprinted water, as compared to the bruised and battered water that comes through the right-angular pipes that bring it to our homes, its structure injured?

It's easy to go into the film ready to believe or ready to deny. And, honestly, you're quite likely to come out with the same ideas you had as you went in. It's definitely biased toward its message, leaving out any experiments (if, indeed, there were any conducted) in which the results did not match up to the desired outcome. But for all that, the film is technically very well put together, both visually and narratively. It will keep your attention, and quite possibly inspire lively discussion among its viewers.