Kumare

What an incredible idea and journey Kumare is. A guy of Indian descent from New Jersey is in search for a guru, but gets disillusioned with all of the gurus he finds. So he decides to grow a beard and start dressing like a guru and see what it takes to actually dupe people.

And he does find a small following. But the real surprise is how big of a positive difference he ends up making in their lives despite him just being an ordinary guy who has put on a robe and a deliberate accent, and is espousing platitudes. But getting people to feel loved, to feel like they matter, to take themselves seriously, and to listen to their own inner voice is valuable, no matter the means.

One of the things that struck me was the effectiveness of the accent and poor English. When you speak like that, it's much much easier to come off as really wise, because what happens is that people start to interpret what you're saying to mean what they need to hear, they start filling in the gaps themselves.

Since you are a guru, they will want to interpret whatever you say in the most positive and profound way they can think of, and if they can't think of any, they'll consider it some great nugget of wisdom for which they were not yet ready.

If he'd spoken perfect English, it would have been much easier to dismiss his utterings as mere platitudes.

Go watch the movie, it's well worth it.