Movies should begin with questions, not answers. The best ones present believable characters in imagined situations while leaving room for audience interpretation. The Fourth Noble Truth has good intentions but lacks curiosity. It begins and ends with a solution (Buddhism) and the rest is empty space.
Aaron (Harry Hamlin) is an arrogant movie star. After smashing the windows of car, he’s ordered to attend mediation sessions with Rachel (Kristin Kerr). They sit cross-legged in Rachel’s living room and she tells him that life is full of “psychic suffering.” If he lets go of his desire, his unhappiness will fade away. A romance grows between them but it’s a graceless courting of two people who do not belong together.
The Fourth Noble Truth has the visual simplicity and awkward tone of a G-rated porno. The script is so bland that it sounds like filler. The film’s locations have as much personality as a two-star hotel room and the costumes are best described as blah. Rachel dresses like a yoga mom and Aaron sports the V-neck and leather jacket of every male actor in Hollywood. Broken into chapters named after Buddhist principles, the plot is structured like a manifesto, turning the film into one long Religious Studies lecture.
The film projects its vision of Buddhism so unquestionably that we have no choice but to resist. It’s not hard in light of the rudimentary way in which the religion is communicated. The film’s embrace goes so far as to suggest that terrorists would stop being terrorists if they meditated a little, a notion that’s as inaccurate as it is distasteful.
Hamlin and Kerr might be fine actors but they don’t get the chance to show it. Hamlin imitates a playboy half his age (he’s 63) while Kerr recites her lines with the breathy voice of an amateur therapist. Both performers are stunted by a dull script and limited backstory.
I hope circularity is a Buddhist belief because The Fourth Noble Truth ends where it began. Aaron seeks the same physical gratification he sought from the start. Rachel and Aaron mend their differences, but their romance isn’t remotely convincing. Aaron actually says to Rachel, “I like you because you don’t give me what I want,” which is itself a harbinger of disaster, but Rachel’s crush on Aaron is equally shallow. She likes him because he’s a movie star. That’s pretty much it.
Werner Herzog’s 2003 documentary Wheel of Time is a much better film about Buddhism. Bearing witness to ceremonies in India and Austria, that film provides a window into a massive population’s rituals of worship. The Fourth Noble Truth contains none of the reverence, respect and due attention Herzog paid to his 2,500 year-old subject. Instead, Noble Truth delivers a watered down, celebrity-friendly endorsement of feel-good “Buddhism.”
The word Buddhist comes from “budh,” or “to awaken,” which is the opposite of what this does. Its vapid characters and simplistic ideas are a full-body bore. That being said, writer/director Gary T. McDonald put care and effort into this film. The editing is clean, the shots are lucid and his style is unpretentious. If anything makes The Fourth Truth bearable it’s the sympathy McDonald seems to have for his characters. If only we could feel it too.