Mindbender (1996)

Mindbender is purportedly a biopic on famed Israeli psychic Uri Geller. But it is, for the most part, a cartoonish farce on his life. Ken Russell did this before in several films about great composers, most notably Lisztomania (1975), The Debussy Film (1965), and Mahler (1974). However, it is one thing to fictionalize the life of a man that has been dead for decades or a century, but quite another to do so with the life story of one still living and breathing.

The film is essentially a comic book of Geller (Ishai Golan), who is seen as a young boy growing up in Tel Aviv, his father (Raffi Tavor) a Major in the IDF that struts around throughout the entire film wearing his uniform, a chippy on his arm and lipstick smeared down his condescending cheek. He's a foul, unlikeable character.

By contrast, Geller's mother (Aviva Joel) is a conservative Jewish seamstress and the source of his strength and reserve.

Bizarre occurrences "happen" around the young boy: an outdoors class presented by a teacher (shot from below to make her seem a hundred yards tall) is replete with a challenge for the young psychic, in which he makes a massive, half-destroyed, utterly false-looking prop "clock's" arms move, by the power of his mind. Spoons bend, predictably, when he is trying to eat his mushroom soup.

Visions of burning kites adorned with Stars of David (Israel has, of course, been in a constant state of conflict since its birth as a nation in 1948) share space with his child's view of a world of cartoonish, cruel adults, who do not understand the weird gifts and abilities he seems saddled with. Flash forward, and he is a young man that has taken his talents and developed them into a night club routine. He is popular with girls (if sometimes difficult and arrogant), one of them finding to her amazement, that he still photographs with the lens cap left on the polaroid. And she also captures a UFO, purportedly from "Planet Hoova." (Geller has always claimed that extraterrestrial forces work through him; or, at the very least, that's where his powers initially originated from.)

Geller (or rather Russell) isn't ashamed to portray the "incident" where Geller did bend to faking a demonstration, but it leads to a change-up in his life, and management, when enters his pal "Shipi" (Idan Alterman). Geller is then scooped up by the wealthy intellectual Hartmann (Terence Stamp) and his chi-chi wife (Hetty Baynes, as "Kitty") to go to Stanford University for a series of "psychic experiments". But most of the film plays like comedy even satire. Did Russell wish to pull down the idol he was supposed to be venerating? Did he even believe in Geller's abilities?

Geller continues to bend cutlery, fix broken watches, cause plaster busts to weep, teleport dogs, and erase computer telemetry while at the palatial home of his scientific patron. Meanwhile, he and Shipi act like typical horny young men out for a good time in the States. The style of the film "Tommifies" the cinematography and general direction; or perhaps it suffers from the worst comic book excesses of something like the original Creepshow (1981). It's replete with weird camera angles, and performances that seem as if they are culled from the cheapest documentary recreation. Did Geller APPROVE this send-up of him? It seems as if he did. The audience, for their part, will be unprepared for what they are getting, the film opening on a seemingly serious, conservative note, with a voice-over from none other than astronaut Edgar Mitchell.

The final scenes are straight from the funny pages, a wild, fantastical science fiction "escape" for Geller from the clutches of the depraved U.S. Military "scientists" who want to use him as a secret weapon. None of this--except for the nightclub scenes in Tel Aviv, can be taken as serious or factual. It may leave some, who expected an entirely different film than this Ken Russell wallow in cinematic excess, angered.

Whatever the case, Geller comes on during the credits to tell the audience he loves them, put his hand out, and invite them, as if he were a televangelist faith healer, to touch the screen. Mindbender is a fun film to watch, but not for the reasons most will come to it. If they expected the story of Uri Geller, this graphic novel fantasy farce most likely will sadly disappoint.

Geller has said: "Ken Russell's version was great but very exaggerated."

Yeah. it doesn't take a psychic to figure that one out.

Mindbender can be viewed on YouTube.