Documentary Review: 'Gratitude Revealed' Should be Shown in Schools

Gratitude Revealed (2022)

Directed by Louie Schwartzberg

Written by Documentary

Starring Louie Schwartzberg, Norman Lear, Deepak Chopra

Release Date November 1st, 2022

Published October 29th, 2022

Available via Streaming Rental apps and Amazon Prime

Bewilderment is the holiest of holy feelings - Deepak Chopra in Gratitude Revealed

I realize that being a person who quotes Deepak Chopra is a recognized identity that I don't have. And yet, here I am, having heard the famed thinker, Deepak Chopra say something that struck deeply within me and forced to quote it. This is a quote that crystalized for me something I have often felt but could never quite say. Confusion, for all the terror and uncertainty it may engender, is an opportunity. To be bewildered, to be lost in a moment is a chance to discover something or solve a problem. It's an opportunity to overcome something.

I was wandering around in that thought for a while as I enjoyed director Louie Schwartzberg's wonderful documentary, Gratitude Revealed. That's where the Chopra quote comes from, this odd, beautiful, thoughtful and incredible documentary that is really like 30 some odd documentaries all in one. In Gratitude Revealed, the famed director of Fantastic Fungi trains his eye for detailed time lapse camerwork and depth of patience, on a group of individuals, creators, artists, musicians, thinkers, a man who is called a Freestyle Philosopher, and Norman Lear.

It's a melange but a wonderfully realized melange. The mixture of people and ideas may seem unrelated, but they are, in fact, united in the idea of gratitude, of living a grateful life. Each in their own way has followed a path in life that they are grateful for. Whether it is a life of art, or music, or surfing or cooking, they're engaged in grateful acts each and every day they enact their passion. It's simple and inspiring and I could not get enough of it while watching this documentary.

Through this exploration of gratitude, you are invited to search your own life, your mind and find the ways in which you connect to the people on screen, the thoughts that connect you to the universe, the meaning you find is all your own and yet is universal, you are sharing this realization with millions of people, each in a different way. Every experience of life is just like that, a new opportunity to experience something. When you think of it like that, isn't life kind of great. It may seem cliché to look at each day like another opportunity, but it really is. You just have to decide what that opportunity is.

Gratitude Revealed is what we should be teaching young children in school. Schwartzberg's curriculum is a series of experiences, a series of handshakes with different people who share a little of their experience that creates a connection through compassion. The man identified in the documentary as a Freestyle Philosopher and proves through his several soundbites to be just that, touches on something that Roger Ebert talked about years ago, how movies are machines that generate compassion. He is referring to the very documentary that he's appearing in as an example of cinema that generates compassion through the shared experience of other lives.

The simple beauty of that idea overwhelmed me while I briefly experienced so many lives during Gratitude Revealed. Among these glorious lives were that of a blind mountain climber, a group of people who dance on the sides of cliffs while hanging from wires, a man in New Orleans who drives around asking people to come to his home for a meal that night, and people who have turned their cars into art. These are lives that could have their own documentary and yet they feel perfectly at home in their brief but memorable existence in this documentary.

Gratitude Revealed leaps and bounds from one life to another leaving indelible impressions everywhere it goes. Much like the curiosity of the imagination that the documentary explores early on, the film restlessly explores humanity in infinite colors and styles. What might appear dissonant becomes a symphony of lives lived and gratitude felt for moments of pleasure, connection, joy and love. The beauty of Gratitude Revealed is abundance, an abundance of all the good in the world, the curious, the wonderful, the imaginative, the creative and the journey of it all.

I'm rambling and I don't care, that's kind of what this documentary does, it rambles around your mind inviting you along, teasing you to question your existence, your connection to the world and what you feel grateful for and why. The documentary is like a conversation with a large group of people, each eager to share and be shared with. I adore Gratitude Revealed for what it is and what it has made of me, a rambling, thinking, thought fueled explorer of my own gratitude.

So, what am I grateful for? You. I'm grateful to you dear reader. I'm grateful for every word I've written, every idea I have ever expressed, and I am especially grateful to those of you who have given my words a place to exist, if only for a little while. I'm grateful for you and I always will be. What are you grateful for? Spend a little time wandering around in that thought and when you find the time, watch this documentary and go even deeper into the idea of gratitude. It's worth it, I promise you.

Gratitude Revealed will be available on Streaming Rental Services and Amazon Prime on November 1st, 2022. Find mty archive of more than 20 years and nearly 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean and follow the archive blog on Twitter at SeanattheMovies. Listen to me talk about movies on the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast on your favorite podcast app. If you've enjoyed what you have read, consider subscribing to my writing here on Vocal. If you'd like to support my writing you can do so by making a monthly pledge or leaving a one-time tip. Thank you.