1980: "Altered States"

                                  Altered States is a surreal science fiction film starring William Hurt (in his first starring role) as an atheistic scientist who experiments with drugs and sensory deprivation to achieve alternate states of consciousness, hopefully finding a deeper meaning behind existence. His obsession with these experiments lead to strains in his marriage to his wife (played by Blair Brown) and a sort of devolution of his physical state (at one point, turning into a Neanderthal). The movie was based on Paddy Chayefsky's only novel and directed by Ken Russell.
                   
                                 Altered States....is strange, to say the least. I have decidedly mixed feelings about the movie itself. Though, I ultimately think the movie doesn't work.
                                 The positives: it's a visual marvel. Ken Russell always had a flair for the flamboyantly bizarre and surreal, and he brings it here. Goat heads, and crucifixes, and graphic nudity. One of the more striking images is a dream sequence of William Hurt and Blair Brown on the ground as a wind turns them into dust and the dust is blown away into an abyss. The scenes with Hurt and his scientists friends have a certain simmering excitement and trepidation to them that any awesome discovery can bring out in people.
                                 However, the story leaves a lot to be desired. I don't really buy the relationship between Hurt and Brown, which is supposed to be the heart of the movie. Most of the time, their relationship is more told than shown (a story-telling no-no), so by the end, Hurt's redemption and the renewal of their love is not earned. The movie is also too cold and detached for such a lovey-dovey ending.
                                In all honestly, I'm not quite what the movie was trying to say, or what the ultimate point of it was (all these characters talking in Chayefsky-esque speeches but ultimately saying nothing). I felt like the movie was trying to tackle a thought-provoking subject without knowing what to say about it. I mean, the hallucinatory sequences are cool, but they seem like transgressive half-baked critiques on Christianity (a running theme in Russell's movies).
                            The first half is mildly interesting, since I had no idea where the movie was going. The second half, however, began to devolve into low-grade silliness. William Hurt turning into a monkey man is neither intriguing or scary. It's just silly. By the end, it felt like a big cop-out. It has a tacked-on humanistic ending of "Well, there's nothing really at the end. All we have is each other". I mean, after all that build-up of alternate realities and consciousnesses, that's the conclusion we reach. It's all about "the power of love". It's the kind of ending that only a burned-out hippie way past his prime would write.

                           Altered States is not necessarily a bad movie, just an bizarre oddity that seems formless and meaningless.