Mystical Brain
2006 · 52m · Canada
Directed by Isabelle Raynauld
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative
University of Montreal researchers study the brain activity behind mystical ecstasy and meditation, examining whether such experiences can improve mental and physical health.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A documentary about neuroscientists measuring God? It's a premise designed to be safe, but Raynauld actually leans into the productive tension—letting the mystery stay mysterious even as the data piles up. The real subversion is that she refuses to pick a side.
Raynauld situates this squarely in the essay-film tradition—think Marker's meditation on image and consciousness—but through the lens of contemporary neuroscience; the formal rigor is in how she lets voice, archive, and brain scans build an argument about what we can and cannot know.
52 minutes to make a university study sing, which means everything hinges on the edit rhythm between talking heads and the neural imagery; that choice—when to cut, when to hold on a researcher's face versus a scan—is what decides whether this feels like a PBS special or something stranger.