If Michael Moore can bring in Wallace Shawn as an economics expert, I guess director Peter Rodger can enlist Ringo Starr as an authority on religion in his worldwide search for an answer to the question “Who is God?” (“God is love,” says Ringo, as in “All you need is . . . ”) So, equipped with “a camera and a hat” (and also, it must be said, a suffocating wall-to-wall soundtrack that sounds variously like outtakes from a Pink Floyd album and beatbox music for an aerobics session), Rodger compiles these glibly edited sound bites parroting new-age pieties.
And what do we learn? That folks who say theirs is the only God and kill those who don’t agree are not so appealing as the monks, priests, imams, rabbis, bit actors, and cute kids being treated for cancer who agree with Ringo. Grouchy Bob Geldof, who says it’s all rubbish, is somewhere in the middle, but my hat’s off to the Kabbalist rabbi who when asked whether God exists says no and when asked whether he believes in Him says yes.
