Pretentious arthouse bulldoodoo.

Last night I finally saw Altered States for the first time, and I was struck by how incredibly pompous it all was. You can tell that there was supposed to be a Very Deep Message, but for the most part I couldn't figure out what the hell it was. Basically, a scientist (who, like every main character who's also a scientist, is an insufferable prick) decides to solve the mysteries of life by taking a hallucinogen and staying in an isolation tank. The result is so ridiculous, over-the-top and "symbolic" that I'd rather not spoil it, but for those who want to know what happens... he turns into a monkey and rampages through the streets. Later when he does the test again, he turns into a being of pure energy and experiences the pain of the birth of life, which teaches him how to love.

The best thing about the movie is the dialog, though. When he's talking about why his wife says "I love you" to him, he concludes “What she means is that she prefers the senseless pain that we inflict on each other over the pain that we would otherwise inflict on ourselves.” And why is he conducting the experiments in the first place? “Ever since we dispensed with god we’ve got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life. That first self is real."

So yeah. It's stoner white-boy mysticism, and it's absolutely hilarious in its sincerity.

I'm also quite a fan of Lynch and Cronenberg at their most self-involved, and I loved Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Yeah, most of the time they're talking out of their asses and are just too stoned (or egotistical) to realise that they are, but they're entertaining in a weird way.

Have you ever spoken to someone after they have injested large doses of Ketamine for a sustained period of time?

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The best thing about the movie is the dialog, though. When he's talking about why his wife says "I love you" to him, he concludes “What she means is that she prefers the senseless pain that we inflict on each other over the pain that we would otherwise inflict on ourselves.” And why is he conducting the experiments in the first place? “Ever since we dispensed with god we’ve got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life. That first self is real."

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LOL. Sounds a bit like Dawson's Creek.

The best thing about that dialog is that it's delivered in a totally casual way, like he might as well be saying "hey, I'm going out to the store, anyone need anything?" Combine that with the ridiculous amount of pseudo-science and Donnie Darko becomes normal by comparison.

And MVS, sadly I haven't had the pleasure, though I imagine it's quite amusing.

That movie is based on a true story. About a guy that took so much Ketamine and sat in sensory deprovation chambers that he believed he was from the year 3000 and all kinds of crazy shit.

He goes insane, hence, the crazy dialogue.

"Californian neuroscientist John Lilly may have done most to bring Ketamine to our attention. Lilly is the man responsible for such crucial scientific breakthroughs as the invention of the isolation tank and communication between human beings and dolphins. The model for the character in the film, "Altered States", Lilly in his autobiographical novel, "The Scientist", tells how he was given the drug by a doctor to cure a recurring migraine. He found that K allowed him to "look across the border into other realities" and went on to take the drug every day for one hundred days. Talk about using a sledge-hammer to crack a nut!

Lilly believes that while he was in the 'K state', he made repeated contact with extraterrestrials, the beings who manage Earth Coincidence Control, your local branch of Cosmic Coincidence Control. These entities are placed on earth to manage coincidences in such a way as to inch us gradually along the evolutionary path, and while on Ketamine, Lilly was able to communicate with these extraterrestrials, who informed him that they had removed DNA samples from Earth and transported them to another planet. There, they proceeded to genetically engineer all of Earth's large-brained mammals - primates, dolphins and whales - which the entities then replanted, fully evolved, back on earth."

Yeah, I read about that. Jessup in Altered States is crazy before he even does anything, and the plot is incredibly ridiculous by the end, so I would have preferred a movie that was just about John Lilly. It's certainly an interesting story on its own without any sci-fi embellishments.

Probably wouldn't have been as insanely entertaining, though.

Arthouse movies are fun because analyzing them makes you appreciate them multiple times.

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Originally Posted by sethsez

“Ever since we dispensed with god we’ve got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life. "

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Actually, I like that line.

Fixed your spoiler tag. And sorry, no swearing in thread titles.

You should see waking life. Some of the ideas it puts forward are interesting, but its basically an excuse for the director to wank until his wrist explodes and his dick screams. Its still pretty cool though!

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a Very Deep Message

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You'd think years of video game story lines would condition us to accept foolishness and unsubtlety.

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Originally Posted by sethsez

The best thing about that dialog is that it's delivered in a totally casual way, like he might as well be saying "hey, I'm going out to the store, anyone need anything?" Combine that with the ridiculous amount of pseudo-science and Donnie Darko becomes normal by comparison.

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That's awesome. Sounds better than using low angles, bombastic and self-important tones. That's when we'd be getting into arthouse college student idiocy.

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You should see waking life. Some of the ideas it puts forward are interesting, but its basically an excuse for the director to wank until his wrist explodes and his dick screams. Its still pretty cool though!

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Chuck Klosterman, in his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, had a great segment on movies (specifically 'what is reality?' movies) and regarding Waking Life, he said, "....Waking Life doesn't feel self-indulgent or affected, and that's because it's a cartoon: Since we're not seeing real people, we can handle the static image of an old man discussing the flaws of predestination." I haven't seen Waking Life or Altered States (but I've certainly heard more than enough about WL from hanging with too many 18-29 year olds), but movies like these are just like anything else: it's all about context. Not necessarily giving the movie the benefit of the doubt, but setting up the context (whether it be rotoscoping Ethan Hawke or filming a narcoticized frenzy) so you can stretch whatever you're doing farther. That's why movies like these are worth watching and deserved to be attempted to be made. As such, I'm pretty damn curious about Altered States now.

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Arthouse movies are fun because analyzing them makes you appreciate them multiple times.

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Analyzing movies rarely moves beyond looking at symbolism, foreshadowing, and vague metaphors ("Well, I think the red tinting of the screen represents Vietnam, and the fact that's he cutting himself with a razor is about how we're all killing ourselves over threre!"). Not worth it. I admit that I used to watch a lot of movies under that ridculous pretense ("Oh, a Swedish movie...this'll tell me how to live my life" or "Well, this is a movie by Tarkovsky, so it's okay if I don't know what the fuck is going on.").