Cinema: Hot Air

MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN Directed by Peter Brook Screenplay by Jeanne de Salzmann and Peter Brook

Meetings with Remarkable Men is the hip '70s answer to Hollywood's oldtime biblical kitsch. Once Cecil B. DeMille re-created the glory days of Moses in glorious Technicolor; now Director Peter Brook is giving the same treatment to G.I. Gurdjieff (1877-1949), the philosopher whose Zen-like quest for spiritual truth has greatly influenced the modern human-potential movement. Though The Ten Commandments and Remarkable Men are theologically antithetical, they are cinematic first cousins. Both films suffer from an excess of piety, a shortage of humor and an infatuation with...