IMDb user comments for
Zeitgeist (2007) (V) More at IMDbPro »

35 out of 80 people found the following comment useful :-
A manufactured and fraudulent zeitgeist indeed, 22 February 2008

Author: thor-teague from United States

The more I think about Zeitgeist, the more I realize how ironic it is; Zeitgeist is more a symptom (and a fairly malignant one) of its subject matter than an antidote. The entire documentary purports to be inviting you to open your mind and educate yourself, yet when you do so all you find out is how hypocritical Zeitgeist is. So... we don't want to be unkind or cause hurt feelings, but we want to be academically correct. Yes, sir.

Here are just a few factual errors; this is by no means extensive.

The Crux was indeed visible from the Mediterranean 2000 years ago (in modern day it is only visible from the southern hemisphere), but it was not called the Southern Cross. It was referred to as Centaurus and was part of a larger constellation. Only the Australians referred to it as Southern Cross, and it's impossible that Australia's indigenous peoples were in contact with the people of the Mediterranean at this point in history.

Egyptian mythology simply cannot be distilled down to a bulleted list of character traits about two of its myriad of Gods. If you bother to educate yourself about Egyptian mythology, you will quickly realize that all of their gods traded roles and changed from dynasty to dynasty, pharaoh to pharaoh. Throughout Egypt's existence, Set's role was revised repeatedly. In fact, he was occasionally HELPFUL to Horus--he ferried Re through the underworld every night! This is among the most basic and simple facts about Egypt and it blows my mind that Zeitgeist got it THAT wrong.

The Egyptians did not have a concept of good and evil as you & I understand it. This is important, people. I implore to burn this concept into your mind if you take nothing else from this review. The good and evil that we commonly understand were introduced to the world by the Judean philosophy. Applying ideas of good and evil to ancient pre-Judean cultures is folly.

But even more fundamentally, you simply can't use Egyptian history as a factual litmus test for ANYTHING, let alone Christianity. All their records dissolved when the papyrus disintegrated. Those hieroglyphs that represent what we know of their history are all spun political speech--you might think of it as the Fox News of the ancient Egyptian world. Egypt's legacy is its architecture and art, NOT its facts! Archaeologists have long since recognized this shortcoming and that we will never know the day-to-day common stories of Egypt and thus a "true" or "real" representation of its culture and people. Imagine 3000 years from now investigators attempting to piece together our heritage solely from stories on Fox News, and you start to get the picture.

Horus was indeed born on December 25th--but Horus dies and is reborn the other 364 days of the year, too. He represents the sun. HELLO? MCFLY? The laundry list of other supposed deities that were all born on December 25th is glazed over pretty fast. Why, pray tell, have I never heard this anywhere but Zeitgeist, even as a curiosity? It's... questionable, to put it politely... that this is the only source of this information. Its justification--it was stricken from the record by people who didn't want you to know about it. (I.e.... "The devil did it.")

The whole conspiratorial assumptions the film makes about Christianity inheriting the traits of Egyptian religion is pretty uneducated, and is a typical attitude of non-Christians/non-Jews. This was not a conspiracy. It was a deliberate, visible, calculated PR war between Judaism and ancient Egypt. When God blotted out the sun, for instance, it didn't just happen to be a random attempt to scare Egyptians. It was a direct, overt refutation of Ra himself. Any traits that first-gen Judaism took from Egypt was an overt assertion of its superiority. The same can idea can be applied to the pagan astrological attributes that Christianity inherited. It's not a conspiracy. For example, Easter and Christmas both occur on Pagan holidays, something the ancient Roman Catholic church did to appease pagans and make the conversion to Christianity a bit smoother (it is most likely that Jesus was actually born in April.)

Zeitgeist's portrayal of Christians burning their wallets (?) because of their interpretation of Revelation is not representative of the whole picture; those individuals are in the minority--but yeah it's out there. It is also personally offensive.

Feel free to look up my review on Loose Change, and all that business applies to the second portion of the film. I have no comments on the third portion of the film, which may or may not be accurate for all I know. I do not consider myself educated in that subject matter.

Additionally, I feel confident in saying Carl Sagan would not have approved of being included in this documentary, considering how wrong its astronomy was. And it's disrespectful to do so after he's no longer around to have any say about it.

But outside of the nitpicks, this film is a bad faith film. It's inviting us, the audience, into this world of privileged information that nobody else in the world has. If Zeitgeist does what it sets out to do in spirit, you should be able to see through this film.

Taking this film strictly as entertainment, it's actually quite amusing and a worthy watch. It is well crafted and nicely produced. The narrator (who I'm going to assume is also the editor) does not sound like a pimply-faced 14 year old, unlike Loose Change. But it should not be interpreted as documentary. Conspiracy documentaries are really coming out of the woodwork these days as a voice of their own, and while I encourage criticism and questioning, I encourage knowing what the hell you're talking about even more. I give this film a few dubious points for being among the first of its kind and amusing--but that's all I can bring myself to award it with.

Add another comment

Related Links