If viewers, however, are to take any of this mumbo jumbo remotely seriously, they will first need to be as 'open' (ie as gullible) as John, and then share his rapidly acquired powers to observe aura-like energy, to commune with the dead, to see the future and to become invisible. Naturally, though this newly discovered creed uses a mish-mash of New Age syncretism to reconcile mainstream religion with evolutionary science, it still claims, like all creeds before it, to be the 'One Truth'. Even if it is intended to help viewers experience for themselves the spiritual Insights that it dramatises and allegorises, these turn out to be little more than sub-Yoda wafflings, with 'the Flow' subbing for the Force, with touchy love and feely intuition the answers to all the world's problems, and with wild coincidence the proof of a divine purpose, when it is really just proof of lazy plotting. This is the whole problem with The Celestine Prophecy. In the film's final image, John too has that smiling expression on his face - but it makes him look not so much like a genuine Illuminatus as like Tom Cruise bouncing on a sofa, all manic and ridiculous. It is the same with Charleen, with Professor Dobson (John Aylward), with Father José (Castulo Guerra), with Julia (Annabeth Gish), with Marjorie (Sarah Wayne Callies), with Father Sanchez (Joaquim de Almeida), with Miguel (Obba Babatundé), or with any of the other Celestine converts that John encounters on his journey – they all display the kind of blank, wide-eyed fervour that is the mark of true hierophants – or else of madmen, drug users and credulous fools.
Wil has a glazed look in his eye and a beatific smile on his lips that tells us he is someone who can see things just beyond our grasp. The Prophecy has to happen to you." So says the guide Wil (Thomas Kretschmann) to his new disciple John.
"Look, I could describe these Insights to you right now and you would hear my words, but you have to do more than that, you have to experience it for yourself.
A series of coincidences leads John to Viciente, where he finds himself caught in the middle of a struggle between the devoted team racing to locate, translate and publish all nine scrolls (each containing a transformative 'Insight' into the physical and spiritual evolution of humankind), and the local General (Petrus Antonius) and Cardinal Sebastian (Hector Elizondo) who are working with a mysterious foreign agent (Jürgen Prochnow) to suppress the Prophecy at any cost. Shortly after he is downsized from his job as a history teacher, John Woodson (Matthew Settle) meets up with an old flame Charleen (Robyn Cohen) who tells him about some ancient prophetic scrolls unearthed in Viciente, Peru.
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