Wow, I Spent Way Too Much Time Writing About This Movie

I know that I said last time that I would be doing some high adventure in the desert next, but I’m taking a quick detour this week for two reasons: a) I’m actually expanding my intended desert adventure post into something beyond a simple review and that’s going to take time and b) Ken Russell died at the beginning of this week and I thought I’d review one of his movies. Now you might think that I’m doing this as a special tribute; that I revere Russell and want to exalt his praises now that he’s dead. Actually, that thought couldn’t be further from the truth: I think that Ken Russell was a talentless hack and loathe and despise his movies. Okay, I take that back: I should not and will not just use this post to slag on the dead.  Besides I was being rather unreasonable with that last statement because prior to today I had only seen one of his films: the execrable Tommy (although to be fair to him all of that blame for that cinematic abortion cannot be assigned to Russell seeing as The Who themselves participated in its creation and could have stopped the project at any time). Tommy is one of my most hated movies of all time, ranking up (down?) there with Armageddon and Die Another Day – it is one of the few films that inspires actual rage and revulsion in me. Anywho, I thought on the occasion of Ken Russell’s death that I would be fair to the dude and watch another one of his films and see if Tommy was just an aberration in his film catalogue, to see if I can actually enjoy a Ken Russell movie. So I looked around for one of his movies that might be interesting to me and finally settled on

Film, 1980

Director: Ken Russell

Story

Psychologist, professor and all-around nutcase Doctor Edward Jessup is experimenting with different states of consciousness and their effect on the physical self. After a trip to Mexico where he picks up some potent Native Ritual Drugs he starts ingesting the strange substance and spending time in a sensory deprivation tank where he starts to exhibit startling signs of physical transformation….

Review

Altered States is better than Tommy but that’s kind of like saying that being punched in the gut is better than being kicked in the nuts. Alright, that’s not true, I’m being unnecessarily nasty. This isn’t a bad movie but it’s not good, either. Altered States is…

…watchable?

Yeah, that’s it. It’s an interesting enough experience and not a *hideous* way to spend an hour and forty minutes but it is by no means a classic film or even a good one. It’s not a spectacular shit storm like Tommy was though so it’s not a total loss. I actually enjoyed parts of it and saw some potential in it, potential that could have been drawn out by another, more talented director – someone like John Boorman or David Cronenberg. The good points here are the intriguing (if flawed and completely non-believable) premise of mind over matter and the character study of the main character, played here by William Hurt (even though the acting by Hurt himself is not quite up to the task – more on that below). The main character arc of Jessup finding out what’s really important to him and why is probably the best part of the movie (well, besides seeing Blair Brown naked at a few points).

Or William Hurt, for those of you so inclined.

The special effects are pretty good and compared to Tommy (again, the only other Russell movie I have seen although I am informed that other Russell movies suffer from the very problem I am about to mention) Altered States is positively subdued in its gratuitous over-the-top “shocking” imagery.

What this means though (and where the negatives begin) is that the aforementioned gratuitous imagery of Altered States is here in large abundance compared to just about every other movie on the planet. Also in abundance is the usual Ken Russell overly pretentious bullshit. I actually had some hopes for the movie after a rather subdued opening sequence and few quiet scenes but my optimism was quickly dashed and splattered to the ground after the scene where Jessup and his newly acquainted (no, really, it only takes about two minutes of screen time) paramour Emily have sex and afterwards he says that during it he was thinking about Jesus and the Crucifixion the whole time. At that point I laughed involuntarily; I think my brains came out my nose. Then a few minutes later this came on the screen

and I stated to suspect that Blair Brown was going to start rolling around in baked beans at some point. And this brings me to my biggest beef with Ken Russell making movies, and that is that he was not any good at it. Just throwing bizarre imagery up on the screen (even in a movie about psychedelic drugs) is not good filmmaking. Doing things just to be “shocking” is not good filmmaking. Ken Russell had all of the visual subtlety of a sledgehammer, and he didn’t even know how to wield that hammer. Later on in the film (SPOILER ALERT) Jessup partially regresses into a subhuman ape-creature and I found myself watching a completely different movie. I mean, a wild primitive ape-man escaping a lab and running around a modern city would make for an entertaining movie but here the sequence is silly and just plain unnecessary.
(END SPOILER)

Cue Toots and the Maytals.

That’s why I said before that Cronenberg or Boorman would have made a better director for this project: both have portrayed disturbing, outlandish stuff on screen but in a more understated and intelligent way. Videodrome, like Altered States deals with differing perceptions of reality brought on by external stimuli but Cronenberg is much more subtle with it.

Pictured: subtlety.

He also makes us question throughout the movie just how much of what we’re seeing is real and how much is in the main character’s head. And there is a sense of growing dread and horror that Russell’s movie doesn’t have at all. John Boorman would have also been a good choice to direct this: he comes from the same cinematic tradition as Ken Russell but has much more talent than Russell ever had. Yes, he has made some bad movies, but at least Zardoz was so supremely bad that it was entertaining. Russell’s bad movies are just painful.

Instead of something painful I thought I'd insert a picture of this. 

Much nicer, no?

Painful is also a word I can use to describe some of the acting here. Too much of the dialogue is screamed by the actors, in particular the actor playing the medical doctor opposed to Jessup’s self-experiments. This role could have been a good, intelligent foil to the protagonist and raised legitimate questions about his intentions and whether what he was doing was right. Instead the character just comes off as shrill and unlikable, and the audience is crudely manipulated into disliking him and rooting unconditionally for the hero. See what I said earlier about Russell’s lack of subtlety? Also, the acting by William Hurt (told you I’d get to it) is… not that great. And it’s weird because it could have been. When I was watching this with the sound turned off to capture screenshots, I noticed how animated and excited Hurt’s face was in certain scenes, but with the sound turned on his delivery seemed dull and wooden. This is because Hurt constantly speaks with the same level monotone, even when raising his voice (strangely enough). He’s done this in other roles too – I remember him being this dull and monotonous in the TV miniseries version of Dune. All of this just goes to show how important voice and inflection is in acting – I think William Hurt could do with some acting lessons from William Shatner.

Now, you stay in there and recite the "Risk is our business" speech 

a hundred times, young man, and maybe we'll let you out. 

Well, that’s Altered States. Does it change my opinion of (the now deceased) Ken Russell? Not really, but at least it wasn’t a complete waste of my time and a piece of putrid, pestilent pus like Tommy was. It is actually worth checking out if you like old and/or esoteric science fiction movies even if it’s not in the same league as 2001 (or even Logan’s Run). So, um… good job, Mr. Russell?  Rest in peace.

Hopefully there's a big party waiting for you on the other side.