Most entertainment is going to market itself as something unique; something distinct from the glut of film, music and literature dribbling from marquees and shopfront windows. Most entertainment is also going to fall short of that innovation (I’m looking at you, Jonathan Liebesman), but with Unity we have a remarkable exception.
It’s a documentary charting a kind of spirituality without religion, but instead the prevalence of compassion and community in spite of humanity’s long history of warfare and prejudice, and is narrated by over 100 celebrities. Helen Mirren, Jessica Chastain, Geoffrey Rush, Kevin Spacey, Dr. Dre; the contributors stretch on.
“When we asked everyone if they were interested in being part of a chorus of narrators for the film,” director Shaun Monson recalls, “well, I approached some people who we already knew at first. I’d worked with Joaquin Phoenix before [on Earthlings]. Once we had a couple of names, we could get a couple more, and we took it from there. I’d do research and see what sort of philanthropic interests each person may have, any altruistic work in the past. I’d try and then select dialogue that was in that area.
“Fortunately, my instincts were pretty good with that – I don’t think there was ever a time someone came and said they didn’t want to say a certain part, to give their lines to someone else. I would just tell them what would be happening on screen, what people would be seeing, and that would help give them a context. Then they’d come in to read, and start in whatever way they wanted. After a while I might say, ‘OK, now I want you to try it deeper, slower, sort of contemplative. Not like a book report, not like you’re standing up in front of class.’ And that’s what they all did – this slow, deep reading that just works so well with the music and images.”
The film itself is an engrossing overview of humankind’s dissonance with itself. It looks to elaborate commonalities and empathies not only within the human world, but in our relationships to animals and to vegetation. The narration goes a long way to easing us into what is at heart a stirring, if subjective philosophical treatise on mortality, but the images themselves are quite powerful. From the opening scene of two terrified bulls corralled in a slaughterhouse, you know you’re in for an affecting experience. Curiously, though, preceding this is a disclaimer recognising that the performers’ opinions may be at odds with Monson’s own ethics and sensibilities.
“The documentary genre has a different criteria to it to the fictional film,” he explains. “You can play a rapist or a serial killer in a hit movie and not have to put any kind of disclaimer out front, nothing that says, ‘This is all pretend, none of this is real,’ even though they make it look as real and as terrifying as possible. If in a documentary you’re saying, ‘Hey, let’s not hurt animals, let’s stop having war,’ it somehow becomes the opposite. You need to have this disclaimer. I find that really interesting.
“Films that are very violent or brutal, which is quite common in reality, are fine and no disclaimers are required. But that’s OK. It’s still worth including because people have strong feelings about these things, so let’s protect the talent. Let everyone know that they’ve agreed to be a part of it because they may intellectually believe in the message of Unity, but there may be a point or two that doesn’t quite work. They may be a carnivore, for instance. So that was the reason.”
The success of the film rests in large measure on how willing the audience is to question basic assumptions about its daily lives, and its place in a near inappreciable cosmic order. Celebrating our connectedness is central to Monson’s premise, though his film also attempts to establish why humankind can’t seem to leave behind war and suffering – something so barbaric and wasteful and undignified and cruel, yet as historically fundamental to who we are as the very air we breathe. The vast majority of world history has borne witness to war, and one wonders if it is not a natural, inescapable part of being human.
“It’s a component of it, yes,” says Monson. “The primitive, competitive, brutal aspect of humanity is there, but so also is the enlightened, uplifting, loving and tender side of us. I think of it like this: the primary function of any biological organism is survival. Why then, if that is true, if we are merely biological organisms, does a mother dash into the street to save her child from an oncoming truck? Compassion has no room in biological survival. It violates the laws of the universe.
“A soldier who goes to face certain death to protect a fellow soldier is also violating that universal law if we are merely biological organisms. This tells us that there is something about compassion that runs deeper within us. That is beyond biology. And I am not a religious person at all, but this to me seems to be a valid, scientifically proven, yet spiritual question about what we are. Something that suggests we are deeper than mere biological organisms. And if that’s the case, we can certainly go beyond war. We can surpass all needless brutality. The capacity is there.”
[Above: screenshot from Unity]
Unity (dir. Shaun Monson) plays at Palace Norton Street, Chauvel Cinema Paddington and Event Cinemas George Street on Wednesday August 12.
