Altered States was not a film I wanted to watch. It seemed built on the post 70's gov't sci-fi paranoia of the early 80's (see The Dead Zone or Scanners or Firestarter for further info). One day my girlfriend finally sat me down and made me watch it, "if you pay attention you'll be surprised", she said. She was right.
Altered States has nothing to do with the government. Sure there are some early references to it in the beginning of the film but they are dropped fairly early. This movie is a satirical look at the "mind expansion though drugs movement" of the late 1960's. A scientist, Eddie Jessup, played by William Hurt is attempting to push the boundaries of sensory deprivation and what it can do to the human mind. It's the late 70's and he's looked at some kind of over the hill quack by his contemporaries as most have moved beyond the LSD induced 60's to respected careers. But when he stumbles upon a mysterious combination of drugs and tank time he's swept to the dawn of humans. The line between dream experience and reality become blurred however as Jessup spends more and more time in the tank and eventually the wall comes crashing down.
This is not a straight line narrative film. It jumps from time to time. The plot is secondary however, to the message the movie is trying to send. The human mind is a merely a collection of experiences and data, a bank if you will that has been storing information since monkeys first decided to stand on two legs. The information is so vast however that to compensate our mind locks most of it away to keep us sane but our most base instincts are still there, we just choose to satisfy them in a different way than our ancestors, today buying a huge TV with a nice sound system is the substitute for downing a huge antelope on the plains. The movie's main point though is what's the point? What could possibly be gained from this knowledge? That's where the farce comes in, this might be the first movie to poke fun at boomers. The big revelation of LSD induced hyper-awareness is a regression to our simian forms. Thanks for the hard work fellas.
I'm neglecting the movie itself however. Technically it's quite an achievement for the time and the music, sound and cinematography really set the mood. I'm sure upon its release Altered States was taken seriously as art and a cautionary tale for science going too far but looking back its an enjoyable farce of the boomer generation and its obsession with the "why?" of the Universe.
Altered States has nothing to do with the government. Sure there are some early references to it in the beginning of the film but they are dropped fairly early. This movie is a satirical look at the "mind expansion though drugs movement" of the late 1960's. A scientist, Eddie Jessup, played by William Hurt is attempting to push the boundaries of sensory deprivation and what it can do to the human mind. It's the late 70's and he's looked at some kind of over the hill quack by his contemporaries as most have moved beyond the LSD induced 60's to respected careers. But when he stumbles upon a mysterious combination of drugs and tank time he's swept to the dawn of humans. The line between dream experience and reality become blurred however as Jessup spends more and more time in the tank and eventually the wall comes crashing down.
This is not a straight line narrative film. It jumps from time to time. The plot is secondary however, to the message the movie is trying to send. The human mind is a merely a collection of experiences and data, a bank if you will that has been storing information since monkeys first decided to stand on two legs. The information is so vast however that to compensate our mind locks most of it away to keep us sane but our most base instincts are still there, we just choose to satisfy them in a different way than our ancestors, today buying a huge TV with a nice sound system is the substitute for downing a huge antelope on the plains. The movie's main point though is what's the point? What could possibly be gained from this knowledge? That's where the farce comes in, this might be the first movie to poke fun at boomers. The big revelation of LSD induced hyper-awareness is a regression to our simian forms. Thanks for the hard work fellas.
I'm neglecting the movie itself however. Technically it's quite an achievement for the time and the music, sound and cinematography really set the mood. I'm sure upon its release Altered States was taken seriously as art and a cautionary tale for science going too far but looking back its an enjoyable farce of the boomer generation and its obsession with the "why?" of the Universe.