A biographical documentary always benefits from a charismatic figure at its center. "Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox" is fortunate to have two of them.
Filmmaker Sara Lamm's film ostensibly chronicles the life and career of the proselytizing natural soap-maker Dr. Emanuel H. Bronner, but it also spends a lot of time with his son, Ralph, who travels the country lecturing and spreading the words of his father.
A bizarre character of epic proportions, Bronner was born in Germany in 1908 and emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 21, a decade before the Nazis killed his parents and nationalized the family soap plant. His experiences were larger than life, but even so his version of his story often seems to border on fiction. He claimed to be the nephew of Albert Einstein, for example, and referred to the Illinois insane asylum where he was confined as a concentration camp.
Escaping from the asylum to California in the late 1940s, the doctor (a self-anointed title, though he was considered a master chemist) revived the family trade of soap-making and began turning out peppermint oil-based multipurpose cleaners. The tingly product was embraced by the counterculture, and Bronner became something of an underground hero and an early advocate of healthy living.
An impassioned speaker, Bronner was a virulent anti-Communist and railed against the fluoridation of drinking water. His activities didn't go unnoticed by the FBI, mainly because he frequently called them with complaints and suggestions.
Bronner's larger mission in life, however, was "to unite all mankind and spaceship Earth" through his "All-One" philosophy. He called for worldwide peace and preached unifying principles through a manifesto he called "The Moral ABCs" that was and continues to be printed on every label of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap -- 4.5 million bottles and counting. The teachings are based partly in Judaism but draw from most of the world's major religions.
Lamm makes liberal use of archival footage of Bronner, including countless hours of fiery, self-made audiotapes, presenting an enigmatic character whose accented, staccato speech and Yoda-like syntax were both mesmerizing and confounding. Blind for the last 20 years of his life (he passed away in 1997), he appears as a slightly wacky prophet whose at-times mystifying message belied a crafty, entrepreneurial mind.
