Sungazing is like firewalking, but better. Instead of steeling yourself and ambling barefoot across flaming coals, you stand barefoot in the dirt and stare directly at the nearest enormous flaming ball of hydrogen. Physical benefits may ensue. Or not. Perhaps the matter of mental fortitude is more important here anyway.
Sungazing may change your life. Your friends may be impressed. Your parents may feel like failures. (What’s next, they’ll wonder, scissorrunning?) Your medical professionals may offer referrals to other medical professionals. Advance preparation seems like a good idea. Before getting started, you’ll do yourself no harm to watch Mill Valley filmmaker Peter Sorcher’s documentary Eat the Sun.
Usefully, Sorcher’s film has just what its subject requires: a level gaze. In fact, the movie itself is hard to look away from. Its main figure, nestled among a pageant of variously credentialed commentators, is San Franciscan Mason Dwinell, a native Vermonter, former sub-Olympian ski jumper and hopeful, if also hesitant, sungazer. We meet Mason shortly after he’s become intrigued by an elderly Indian sungazing guru who claims to have gone for years without needing to eat solid food.

Sorcher takes his time getting a load of these guys, allowing us to wonder proudly what San Francisco would be without its transient kooks, lost souls and easy targets of ridicule from the hidebound residents of lesser cities. But he never loses sight (har har) of the fact that he’s making a film about people who actually stare at the sun on purpose. His lens is both illuminating and potentially inflammatory, like a well-aimed magnifying glass.