Mushrooms. You can eat them, grow them, gather them. You can use them as a medicine, as a hallucogen or as a metaphor for a system or society. This documentary examines all of these uses and intrepretations, but goes further to present the mushroom as a teacher, a healer, a philosopher and, ultimately, as saviour of the earth.
After seeing this documentary I am tempted to compare it to the superpowerful mycelium, an organism that leaves spores of knowledge and creates fertile grounds for awareness and is, itself, the mystical system that mushrooms are considered the fruits of.
The journey that filmmaker Marion Neumann takes you on, sometimes makes you feel you have eaten the magic kind, as you travel into the mind-blowing and colourful microscopic world of fungi. Or when you look at the iconic scenes of the atom bomb, in reverse, to underline the notion that mushrooms can undo some of the excesses of human activity.
This notion is dropped in right at the beginning, when we meet Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, a professor of anthropology who tells about the wondrous qualities of the matsusake, one of the rarest and most expensive mushrooms in the world, grown only in the red pine forests of Japan. What makes the organism even more intriguing is that it was the first thing to emerge after the nuclear bombs were dropped during the Second World War. The way this mushroom develops resistance to poison, adapts to it and even renders the soil suitable for other life to grow, presents the world with hope and with a message: all life on earth is connected and interconnected.
Neumann finds an interesting array of characters to promote the many qualities of the mushroom in scientific, practical and philosophical terms. We get to know Ursula Weiher, a mushroom gatherer; Geoffroy Renaud, a hip mushroom cultivator; Peter McCoy, the author of Radical Mycology and a radical mushroom worshipper himself; Vanja Palmers, a Zen priest, and Franz Xaver Vollenweider, Professor of Psychiatry. (The characters are not introduced – only at the credits you learn who you were watching, which makes it sometimes hard to remember who it is you’re looking at.)
The documentary meanders through the visions, discoveries and lessons of its protagonists in their natural habitat – conferences, laboratories, mushroom farms, observation rooms and, of course, the forests, that wondrous habitat of the mushroom. The shots in the forests are enchanting and house tranquility, magic and equilibrium. Visual texts connect or intersect the stories – some of which may be regarded as the mushroom speaking to us. The texts don’t preach, you are left on your own to find nuggets of wisdom and insight.
The film delivers some fascinating observations on, and facts about, the organism – its tremendous problem solving and regeneration abilities, for example. We see how mycelium flushes out contaminants within the soil, making it suitable for plants to grow in again. It teaches about the de-centralised intelligence of the fungi, how they seem to have some sort of consciousness and can sense warmth and movement.
The mind expanding qualities of the mushrooms are discussed enthusiastically by Professor Franz Xaver Vollenweider. He examines the neurological effects of the so called psilocybine compound through use of brain scan. While his appearance in the film is sadly brief, appearing only towards the end, he talks about how these fungi seem capable of battling depression as they alter the way we self-reflect. It is exciting to hear him talk about how the cosmos has created this system, which can make us experience reality as it is, without judgment or ego, and can teach us about altruism and empathy. He doesn’t believe mushrooms can save us, but “we can learn from it and we can put in practice what we’ve learned”.
The mushroom might not actually speak, but it is telling us a lot. Maybe we can hear its whisper in the prominent soundtrack of the film. Sound artist Olga Koksharova provided the audio, turning the humble fungi into living, breathing, feeding and growing creatures, and the film into a magical experience.
Switzerland, 92 mins, 2021
Director and cinematographer Marion Neumann
Sound Design and Music Olga Koksharova
Editing Marion Neumann and Orsola Valenti
Producers Luc Peter and Katia Monla for Intermezzo Films
Sales Intermezzo Films
