Altered States
In a jerry-rigged sensory deprivation tank in the brick basement of Columbia University in April 1967, in an effort to confirm his hypothesis that schizophrenia and other such mental illnesses are merely altered states of mind, psychopathologist Doctor Edward Jessup begins his search for answers, using himself as an experimental vessel, experiencing dream states and memories over a period of hours which to him, subjectively, feel less, emerging energised and convinced he is on the right track, vivid recollections and things he has never personally witnessed lodged in his mind as though he had lived them only moments before.
His search continuing across the Americas over the next decade and more, it will take him through marriage and breakup with another research scientist, Emily Jessup, accompanied by his friend Arthur Rosenberg, his anchor who watches over him during his sessions which become more extreme, his mental regressions exhibiting first as physiological symptoms then actual physical manifestations, unpredictable and unexplainable by any conventional school of thought, moving through conventional science and medicine to more primitive religions and the mystical, the answers Eddie craves always just out of reach.
A novel by Network’s Paddy Chayefsky published in 1978 which he would adapt to the screen himself, though it was credited to the pseudonym Sidney Aaron following disagreements over the direction of the material when released in 1980, Altered States was directed by Ken Russell, a man known for flights of imagination and blending of art, particularly music, obsession and the madness of men who pursue knowledge and greatness, in Song of Summer, The Music Lovers, Tommy and Lisztomania and later Gothic and The Lair of the White Worm.
Starring Lost in Space’s William Hurt in his film debut, a man who was happy with the stage but had been fascinated by the ideas in Chayefsky’s novel when he first read it, with Fringe’s Blair Brown, 2010’s Bob Balaban and Hill Street Blues’ Charles Haid as Emily, Arthur and the increasingly, and justifiably, concerned Harvard Medical School head of department Mason Parrish, Altered States is an often unhinged exploration of the boundaries and extremes of consciousness, a man swallowed by his own quest and dragging those who care for him along with him, he questioning the very nature of existence while they ask if the risk is worth it.
An inversion of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a journey moving inwards as evolution reverses, Eddie witnessing the birth of the human race and becoming a proto-hominid (the physically adept dancer and choreographer Miguel Godreau), the contemporary description of Altered States as “science fiction horror” is reductive, a film which expressed the ideas of the era from which it hailed, the “new age” ideas of the baby boomers coming of age and disappointed in what they found around them, war, inequality, uncertainty, searching for meaning and identity, something the director’s son Rupert Russell also explores in his documentary The Last Sacrifice, Jessup an intellectual who finds he is at his most content as an uncomplicated primitive in a tribe of similar beings.
Presented as a 4K digital restoration by Criterion, their new edition of Altered States is supported by a new commentary by film historian Samm Deighan, an archive interview with Russell from the time of the release where he compares it to “opening Pandora’s Box,” coincidentally the name of the Jim Steinman project he would collaborate on later that decade, a brief 2009 conversation with Hurt, and a new interview with visual effects artist Bran Ferren who brought experience from rock concerts to create new techniques with light and mirrors to allow many of the sequences to be captured “live” in camera rather than added in post-production.
Altered States is available as a 4K UHD/Blu-ray double disc set from Criterion now
