You Ain't Seen Me, Right? - Altered States (1980)

You've had your fighting robot stories this week, now it's time for your proper film education stuff. You can't have your dessert without eating your mash and peas first.

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Altered States (1980)

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It seems inconceivable in this age of focus groups and corporate synergy that a figure as mercurial as Ken Russell would be handed the reins of a big-budget sci-fi picture. But so it was that the infamous director of Women in Love (1969) and The Devils (1971) was hired to helm Paddy Chayefsky's pseudonymous adaptation of his own novel.

The ensuing fireworks between Russell and the equally headstrong writer of The Hospital (1971) and Network (1976) seem so inevitable in hindsight that one has to wonder how anyone thought these two volatile souls could co-exist and sanction such an unlikely alliance. But despite its turbulent production and lukewarm reception, Altered States has become a cult classic whose influence can be seen in myriad films.

Edward Jessup (William Hurt) is a professor of abnormal psychology who experiments with sensory deprivation in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the unconscious mind. Jessup travels to Mexico and partakes in an Indian ceremony, consumes a potent hallucinogenic and experiences a series of vivid and disturbing visions. Convinced of the drug's transformative powers, Jessup returns with a sample and begins to use it during his sessions in the sensory deprivation chamber. The combination of the two causes a change in him that confounds all logic.

Of course, the visual effects in Altered States are primitive in comparison to today's norms - the ultimate shortcoming of the cutting edge is its swift descent into obsolescence; watch the current crop of CGI-laden blockbusters in thirty years' time and be astounded at how they fail to live up to your recollection. However, unlike some of the era's most celebrated high-concept spectacles, its array of effects has not dated to the point of outright risibility, the nascent video technology retains a grisly physicality utterly lacking from the sterile exactitude that prevails currently. The use of prosthetics in particular stands up alongside Rick Baker's celebrated work on An American Werewolf in London (1981).

Russell's direction is as provocative and bombastic as ever, using a battery of extreme angles and startling compositions to convey the religious allegory and Freudian symbolism that characterize his work; abetted by the atonal strains of John Corigliano's score and Jordan Cronenweth's moody photography. Though it is largely an exercise in technical dexterity, the cast acquits itself well within such limitations. Hurt brings a frenzied energy to the role of the dauntless empiricist pursuing the secrets of the human condition to the exclusion of all else, with Bob Balaban in typically understated form as his long-suffering assistant.

Altered States dabbles with weighty subjects beyond the ken of most sci-fi sagas. The film declares that there are some mysteries human enquiry will never solve - there is a palpable suspicion of scientists spouting recondite terminology in an attempt to make sense of such ineffable aspects of existence - speculating that the religious impulse is as much chemical as ethical; a manifestation of the mind's capacity to construct a moral framework and create potent imagery.
That's what I was just about to say. All that, what he said. Definitely. More from You Ain't Seen Me, Right? next week.