Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

This fascinating documentary, directed by Jon Foy, examines the mystery of what is called the Toynbee tiles. Since the 1980's 130 plaques , or tiles, have appeared on various city streets which all have the same cryptic message--"Toynbee Idea In Movie 2001 Resurrect Dead on Planet Jupiter.

Although many have been spotted in the Philadelphia area, others were located in the Midwest, New York City, even a few in South America. Some were even spotted on the highway and one just outside the Lincoln Tunnel in New York.

Who's leaving these mysterious tiles and what do they mean? Three young men, Justin Duerr, Colin Smith, and Steve Weinik were all separately investigating this mystery when they decided to join forces after a number of years and see if they could come up with the answer.

To me the fun and interest was in the "peeling of the onion", so to speak, as they took several key clues and tried to thoroughly examine them. One clue would lead to another and open up possibilities while some would lead to dead ends.

Finally, through hard nosed detective work they began to unravel the mystery. I find this type of out of the mainstream documentary riveting and rewarding.

If you've ever seen and enjoyed "The History Detectives" on PBS you may very like this film as well.

Another great documentary from Sundance.

If you liked - Hoop Dreams, American Movie, Brother's Keeper, King of Kong, Young@Heart, In the Shadow of the Moon then SEE THIS MOVIE.

Well made and entertaining. This movie will have your attention throughout. The presentation is meticulous. It is obvious this was a labor of love for all involved.

This is what Sundance is all about. First time director and self financed. Five years in the making. The director even taught himself how to write film soundtrack so that he could score the movie on his own.

In today's world true mysteries are hard to come by. It seems now if you can't figure out something you simply hop on a computer and do a Google search to find the answer. For example, recently I was stumped by a plague of fruit flies in my house and couldn't seem to get rid of the pests. So after about 3 days of annoyance I jumped on my laptop and typed "how to get rid of fruit flies?" and as easy as that there was recipe to create your own homemade fruit fly trap using a glass, paper and some juice. Mystery solved! In Resurrect Dead the film-makers were stuck in actual mystery that could not be solved with a simple internet search. They dived into a mystery that seemed impossible to solve. For years they were dumbstruck to how the existence of these tiles had ended up on the streets of many metropolitan areas in the eastern seaboard of the US. The documentary brilliantly paces itself into all the years of research, dead ends, and small glimpses of possibilities that shouldn't be ruled out. For me I was enthralled with their logical approach and deduction of where these tiles were coming from and what their message meant. In a way the documentary really motivated me have a mystery to solve in my life. Or an overarching goal that drives me to find what is the truth in this situation? Today it's easy just to go through the normal phases of life and just exist in the norm of what the world says is a good life. But I think we all have unique opportunities that sometimes come in the form of mysteries that only we can solve!

I wish I had some knowledge of the Toynbee tiles before I had watched this, simply so that I could have felt more of the emotions that the filmmakers must have felt. But even knowing nothing, I was completely consumed by the subject and although part way through I started to wonder if I actually wanted to know the answers to the questions being asked, the end satisfied both my curiosity and my reservations.

It would be difficult to describe without giving too much away but I experienced an exquisite moment when my mind slipped half a second ahead of the narrative as a penny dropped momentarily before the narrator spoke. I had a smile on my face for the rest of the film.

I'm sure that this will not suit many people but for me it was wonderful and inspiring.

Like Mary Poppins, the Tiler is an extraordinary creature coming and going in extraordinary ways. They leave behind them a decades-long mystery that seems unsolvable even to the dedicated protagonists of the film until, one day, answers fall into their collective lap, presenting them with a new challenge: what next? The film was handcrafted with love over five-plus years by a first-time filmmaker so has a few rough edges but nothing distracting in any way from its central focus: who is behind the "Toynbee Idea" street art that appeared over the course of decades in cities mostly on the east coast and what do the cryptic messages represent? The filmmaker and his mostly-musician friends are on journeys themselves, particularly Justin Duerr, an independent artist with his own troubled past who has long been fascinated by the Tiles. I think I cared as much about Duerr's need to solve the mystery as I did about understanding the message on the Tiles. If you are interested in outsider art, in how folks struggle to express themselves as they march to different drummers or simply like having adventures down surreal rabbit holes, I think you will enjoy this film. I feel as if I have grown bigger somehow by getting so close to something so odd and tantalizing and then...