Friday, May 29, 2009

#34 Altered States



My senses were so assaulted I was able to watch an entire episode of Fran Drescher's The Nanny, without cringing, immediately after this film.

I will preface these thoughts with the following statement:
I am a writer. This movie is overly visual and substantially aural, with little attention paid to the words, dialogue and storyline. Therefore, I immediately find flaw with what may be, to some, an incredible film (although I doubt it).

That said, I found this movie to be ... interesting and weird. Which is not to say it wasn't fun to watch. I like interesting and weird.
I think I'll just launch into the problems I have with this movie. It feels like it is meant to stimulate your senses above all else. The dialogue uses a lot of big words, which shows you that the characters are intellectuals, but really has no more use in the film than that. In fact, a good portion of the dialogue is nothing but empty words. So much so that there are times it is unintelligble, either due to other noises, or layers of people talking over each other.

The actors do a good job, pushing the story along through a lot of expression. Not that there is much of a story. I mean once I removed all the imaging and sound and cut this movie down to it's basic storyline, it's incredibly weak.
A man experiments with hallucinations to the point they become externalized and he regresses into a caveman state, physically and emotionally.
*spoilers*
Then he takes it a step further and regresses into the time before man. All this is surrounded by a really lame story about a man and a woman who get married, are getting divorced, and then end up with each other in the end.
*spoilers over*

Verdict
2.5 stars
I almost liked it. I think it would have been better without all the noise. The visuals were interesting, although very dated now, and overused. The scene when the man regresses into a caveman and heads to the zoo is incredibly hilarious. Although it wasn't meant to be. I think that scene alone made this movie get that extra half a star, cause I could watch that scene over and over again.

Awards
Nominated for 2 Oscars - best original score and best sound.
Disagree and agree. I didn't even notice the score much, so I can't really agree that it was worthy of an Oscar nomination.
I did read that this movie was using some sort of new sound system developed by Warner and placed in certain theaters, so for the time the sound was probably all very exciting. Now though, it's all pretty much noise compared to the subtle use of surround sound that can be so artistically employed nowadays.
Nominated for a Golden Globe - New star of the year for William Hurt.
Agree. I thought his performance was subtle, yet perfect for the film. It's his acting that allows a viewer to stay with the movie throughout the assaults of image and sound.

Box Office
This movie must have had some sort of good word of mouth surrounding it. It was initially released in 3 theaters and went on to gross almost 20 million dollars, which seems pretty impressive for this style of movie. I'd love to dig up what it was that caused so many people to seek this movie out. My guess is a lot of drugs, but who knows.

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