ALTERED STATES
Ken Russell | 1980 | USA | 1h42m | Presented in the original English audio with English subtitles
Some genius at Warner Brothers decide to give Ken Russell a big budget science-fiction film. He responded exactly as you would hope.
William Hurt plays Eddie Jessup, a brilliant researcher convinced that altered states of consciousness can take us back beyond memory, beyond language and perhaps even beyond the human body itself. He begins by floating in isolation tanks. Then he starts combining the experiments with powerful psychoactive hallucinogens. It's at this point things get considerably less academic.
The screenplay came from Paddy Chayefsky, who had already written NETWORK. Chayefsky was interested in ideas, argument and language. Russell was interested in images, bodies, religion, sexuality and excess. The collision between the two is all over the film. The dialogue is dense and intellectual, while the visuals keep trying to blow the entire thing apart.
Much like last week's THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM, Russell fills ALTERED STATES with crucifixions, primordial landscapes, bodily mutation and psychedelic visions that feel closer to religious revelation than conventional science fiction. The more Jessup insists that consciousness can physically reshape the body, the more the film starts taking him at his word.
William Hurt was making his feature-film debut here, which makes his performance even more impressive. Eddie is intelligent, arrogant, obsessive and increasingly impossible to live with. Blair Brown plays his wife Emily, who spends much of the film watching the man she loves become more interested in breaking through the limits of human consciousness than remaining recognisably human.
The transformation effects were created by Dick Smith, the makeup artist behind THE EXORCIST. Best Makeup wasn't yet a category at the Academy Awards, but if it was he surely would of won it for this. (Smith later won Best Makeup for AMADEUS at the 1985 Oscars). I only mention this because one of the film's great pleasures is watching the physical consequences begin to emerge. Ken Russell commits completely to Eddie's transformation.
The production itself was famously difficult. Russell and Chayefsky clashed throughout filming, particularly over how Chayefsky’s dialogue was delivered and how far Russell pushed the material visually. Chayefsky eventually removed his name from the screenplay credit and used the pseudonym Sidney Aaron instead.
That conflict probably explains part of why the film works. ALTERED STATES feels like two very different sensibilities fighting over the same movie: one trying to explain consciousness and the other trying to melt it. It's a masterpiece, both in terms of visuals and story-telling. Don't miss it.
BODY HORROR · CINEMA OF OBSESSION · UNRELIABLE REALITY · CULT CLASSICS
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