Becoming Nobody (2019)

• Year: 2019
• Released: 06 Sep 2019
• Country: United States
• Adwords: N/A
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10534256/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/becoming_nobody
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/becoming-nobody
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: PG
• Genre: Documentary
• Runtime: 81 min
• Writer: N/A
• Director: Jamie Catto
• Cast: Jamie Catto, Ram Dass
• Keywords: spirituality,

	7.5/10
	47/100
	62% – Critics
	71% – Audience

Becoming Nobody Storyline

In 1988, aspiring London filmmaker and musician, Jamie Catto, then 20 years old, heard a cassette of Ram Dass after attending a yoga class. In 1994, he met Ram Dass at a UK retreat while his girlfriend was pregnant with the first of his three daughters. Jamie was never the same person after that.Catto interviewed Ram Dass for the first time in 2001 in a wonderful moment in the film One Giant Leap (2002), which was subsequently released through Palm Pictures. This interview was followed by another for the second Giant Leap installment, What About Me? (2005).In the course of his many visits with Ram Dass in Hawaii, Jamie met Raghu Markus, Producer of Becoming Nobody and Executive Director of Love Serve Remember Foundation. Jamie shared his desire to make “THE Ram Dass film” with Raghu. With a background in the music industry, Raghu understood the historic value of creating a seminal film of Ram Dass’ life of observations and shared experience. The goal of reaching out beyond a core group already familiar with Ram Dass would require a more comprehensive feature length film, one with a broader perspective and appeal that would synthesize and coalesce his life of work and wisdom.Wit and humor in the context of a casual conversation seemed a good way to deliver heady information in a simple, entertaining, and illuminating fashion. Blessed with a delightful and articulate on-screen personality, Ram Dass would be up to the task. Even with the after-effects of a severe stroke, Ram Dass delivers an engaging narrative, touching the joy, the foibles, and the honesty for the very essence of his work and relevance.Using his own life as an example through the director’s interview, accompanied by archival footage and original music, Ram Dass explores our universal human condition and behaviors in connection to the journey of the soul and the shared unity of all of our lives. The initial core interview was filmed in March of 2015 at Ram Dass’ home on the island of Maui, Hawaii. Becoming Nobody represents the core arc of Ram Dass’ teachings and life: whether as Dr. Richard Alpert, the eminent Harvard psychologist, or as Ram Dass who serves as a bridge between Eastern and Western philosophies, he has defined a generation of inner explorers and seekers of truth and wisdom. Through his turns as scion of an eminent Jewish family from Boston, rock-star Harvard psychologist, counter-culture rascally adventurer, Eastern holy man, stroke survivor and compassionate caregiver, Ram Dass has worn many hats on his journey, the narrative of which is revealed in this film.In Becoming Nobody, historic clips balance an engaging conversation with director Jamie Catto. We come to understand how our old roles and disguises become increasingly burdensome. The film captures a loving man full of joy, wit, honesty and wisdom, at ease in conversation while sharing his considerable pains and pleasures. The life experiences that have freed him from the attachments of his ‘somebody-ness’ have transformed him into the radiant soul who now inspires a new generation.

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Becoming Nobody Movie Reviews

Beautiful. Profound. And moving.

After seeing some other reviews of this film that I don’t believe did it justice (based on my experience) I felt compelled to write this review.

Overall, I was coming to this film the way I would go to a dharma talk. To hear Dass share wisdom, and see some of him in the process. Didn’t really know what to expect.

What I found left me very moved and at the end absolutely transfixed, and deeply in touch with my being and truth. One interaction in particular between Ram Dass and the film maker moved me so deeply that I could learn more of his teaching from the interaction than from the talks.

Other views are certainly valid. I felt the need to share because depending on the mindset and expectations you have going in, you may find this film speaking to you in a way the raw score would not suggest.

Blessings.

First Hit: Moments of delight with Ram Dass are mixed with Jamie Catto’s own agenda.

First Hit: Moments of delight with Ram Dass are mixed with Jamie Catto’s own agenda.

Instead of producer and director Jamie Catto eliciting information about Ram Dass and his life, we get him doing this and also spending time sharing his own spiritual journey and points of view. It isn’t that this is wrong; however, I came to see a film about Ram Dass, a man who has influenced so many of us baby boomers and others with his willingness to expand our understanding of life as it is.

Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert) found a yearning from within to better understand life as he and others were experiencing it. He had questions about what and why life, the way it was unfolding for him, was unsatisfactory. With these questions, he began a quest to better understand it all.

Meeting with Dr. Timothy Leary, he started taking various types of drugs, psilocybin and then LSD to expand his consciousness. But it wasn’t until he met Neem Karoli Baba, a Hindu spiritual teacher in India that he called Maharaj-ji, did he find his guru and path. In Maharaj-ji he found loving acceptance and limitless love for who he was.

The film intersperses current time interview segments with Catto, with previously recorded film and video segments of Ram Dass teaching groups of people. These clips cover a broad spectrum of his life and help to make this story interesting.

Moments, where Catto shared his understanding of Dass’s teachings looking for approval and pats on the back from Dass, got tiring. At one point Jamie outright told Ram that he thought of Dass as his father figure and it came across, to me, as needy and approval seeking.

The film did not spend as much time on Ram’s hospice work, for which he’s very well known and respected. But Dass did talk a little about it by telling a couple of stories, in video clips, of patients he worked with. He also spoke about the importance of embracing both the concept and actual death as it arrives at each of us.

It was in these segments along with a couple of other discussions that I fell into enjoying this film wholeheartedly. I’ve come to understand many of the same things that Dass has learned through my own meditation practices and readings, including his books “Being Here” and “Still Here.”

Catto, as I previously indicated, spent too much time sharing his own teachings and understandings, as I came to see this film about Ram Dass.

Overall: Not quite the film it could have been, but there are genuinely out-loud enjoyable moments.

The irony is too strong

While an interesting subject, the director/interviewer (Catto) seemed more interested in inserting himself into the narrative of Ram Dass instead of providing an insightful dive into Ram Dass’ teachings.

The hypocrisy of Catto’s ever present ego on film felt at odds with the true spiritual teachings of Ram Dass. Nevermind that 50% of this film was random stock footage hap-hazardly laid over narration.

Stock footage is an ok tool, but when it has nothing to do what’s shown on screen it leaves the audience wondering if they’re watching a real movie or an amateur’s college term project.