Amanda, a deaf photographer played by Marlee Matlin, wanders through a wedding reception, an argument with her ex-husband, and a bout of self-doubt, while animated sequences reduce her body to cells, neurons, and firing synapses. Between these scenes, physicists, neuroscientists, and other experts explain quantum indeterminacy, the observer effect, and the idea that consciousness might shape the reality it perceives. One interviewee, presented on screen as a doctor of psychology, is J.Z. Knight, who says she channels a 35,000-year-old warrior spirit named Ramtha, and her commentary sits alongside the scientists' without being labeled differently. Masaru Emoto's photographs of ice crystals, said to change shape depending on the words spoken near the water before freezing, appear as evidence for thought affecting matter. The film's central claim, that quantum physics supports the idea people can consciously construct their own reality, drew sharp criticism from physicists for misrepresenting the science it cites, a controversy that became as much a part of its story as the film itself.