Altered States (film): One of those daring artsy films that I don’t get
At first I was going to say that this is one of the worst films I have ever seen but now that I have had a chance to think about it a bit that is not the case. It is however, one of the strangest films that I have ever seen, for certain.
The film was made in 1980 and is the first time that both William Hurt (who plays the lead role) and Drew Barrymore (an extremely minor role just a bit above an extra) had ever been on the silver screen.
The movie deals with something that actually happened (although not in the way it is presented) about how sesory deprivation research was conducted in isolation tanks under the influence of psychoactive drugs such as LSD. The idea behind this was to achieve some level of heightened access to brain capacity. This film presents these sorts of experiments as being successful, but with various unintended side-effects.
This film was praised for being quite daring, especially for the time period that it was released in. The musical score and bizarre sound-effects are the products of the experimental directorial tactics that were employed by Ken Russel, who is quite well-known for carrying on with controversial methods of film-making.
This movie is not necessarily difficult to follow, it is just at times a bit over the top strange and when the film ends I wouldn’t say that it expanded my mind at all, I just kind of thought It was boring and weird with intentionally complicated dialogue to nail the point home about how the people involved are all intellectuals of the highest order.
If you are the type of person that likes a movie to be a puzzle, with bizarre imagery and multiple ways of interpreting the various scenes, perhaps this film would be for you. For me anyway, I found myself turning on my DS during a lot of the dialogue. I am granting the movie as many points as I do simply because of the bold and daring methods employed given the relatively puritan nature of the early 80’s.
It seemed to me a philosophical film. He tells about the nature of human consciousness, memory. Places accents, what role in the life of a person is played by love, and what is the search for the original essence of a person. The film also leads to reflections on whose position in the scientific world is more correct. Eddie, who is experiencing an unexplored drug that eventually causes shocking consequences, or his buddy Mason, an Orthodox scientist who follows classical research methods, and is skeptical about Eddie’s experiments.
In general, the film makes a pleasant impression of an extremely intelligent, interesting, but emotionally impetuous work.
With that review, I'm not very attracted to it! Although I think I've seen that this film was nominated for an Oscar and that I'm a fan of intelligent cinema, auteur cinema, which deals with strange subjects, so you say that this film is not so interesting. Sometimes it's hard for me to see old movies, especially if they haven't had good reviews. Since I haven't seen it, I can't give it a score. I'll trust that 4/10 of yours. Thank you always for your film review. Nice day for you
well, i would seek a second opinion as this movie is held in high regard by real critics and the public as a whole. I didn't like it and the only opinion i have in my head is my own :)