The Dhamma Brothers (2007)
Director: Jenny Phillips
Movie review
From Time Out New York
This debut film from cultural anthropologist and psychotherapist Jenny Phillips tells the unlikely story of a group of inmates at an Alabama maximum-security prison who began practicing meditation following a ten-day course in the ancient Buddhist technique of vipassana. There’s very little background about either the practical details or the religious roots of the practice (perhaps not an accident in light of the political blowback the prison meditation program has generated), but the film, which focuses primarily on four individuals, is unusually effective at finding the humanity inside men usually reviled as monsters—not least by themselves.Author: Joshua Land
Time Out New York Issue 654: April 10 - 16, 2008
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.



What do you think?
Post your review now