This week’s movie is an interesting case. It’s clearly an attempt to create an arty experience while paying homage to a certain time-span and its cinematic trends. It generally does a good job at this, and the overall product isn’t too bad, all things considered. However, it ultimately seems to amount to more of a “the filmmaker made this because they could” sort of thing, where there is a clear message and its executed fairly well, but it doesn’t give you too much more than that, and the choice of presentation seems to come from a place of “fanboy” rather than major inspiration. Before we go into my impressions, let’s take a look at the story.
The film takes place within the Arboria Institute, a location established in the 60s that seeks to expand the mind and spirit through drug use and such, along the lines of the Timothy Leary “better living through chemistry” sort of mindset. However, rather than its heyday, we encounter the facility during the 80s, where its founder has given up his head position, and instead his student, Dr. Nyle, is now the chief. Nyle is not entirely well-adjusted, though he tries to appear so. He is perpetually hooked on various drugs and chemicals, wears a wig and contact lenses, and is keeping a young girl, Elena, prisoner in one of the rooms. Nyle seems to show great interest in Elena (interest that isn’t entirely professional, disgustingly), who shows signs of psychic powers, though he keeps her controlled using some sort of triangular device that emits a dampening field. Nyle wants to test Elena’s abilities while still keeping a leash on her, but Elena just wants to leave and see her father. To prod this further, he leaves a picture of her mother in her room, which she keeps and looks at for comfort. Meanwhile, Nyle’s assistant Margo discovers Nyle’s private notes, which depict several strange medical/spiritual drawings and diagrams, as well as several explicit drawings of Elena in suggestive positions. Suspecting Margo’s discovery, he tells her that Elena smuggled something into her room. When Margo goes in to take the picture, Elena kills her with her psychic powers. Nyle then knocks her out with the device waves and leaves to go visit the founder, Mercurio Arboria, who is now nothing more than a feeble old man who whittles his time away watching mindless television and intaking pharmaceuticals. It’s revealed that many years ago, back during the early days of the institute, that Nyles was put through a procedure that was meant to expand his mind and take him to another plane. This involved submerging in a black, oily liquid for a good stretch of time, and while he was under the liquid, he experienced something of a nightmare. When he came back out, he was insane and ended up killing Arboria’s wife, though Arboria wasn’t too concerned with this. Instead, he subjected their infant daughter to the liquid as well, in a sort of odd new age baptism. This infant grew up into the Elena we know today. So, what does Nyles have planned? Will Elena escape the facility? I’ll let you see that for yourselves. For now, let’s get into my impressions.
As I was watching this movie with my viewing partner, we started naming off a lot of different things that this film reminded us of. 2001: A Space Odyssey, THX 1138, Solaris, Altered States, Manhunter, Suspiria, The Shining, Heavy Metal magazine, and the music of Tangerine Dream, Giorgio Moroder, and John Carpenter scores. We were floored when we looked into the film’s making and discovered that we nailed most of these on the head as influences. This film is dripping in sci-fi and horror elements from the later 60’s to the early 80’s, from the sterile white facility with funky furniture and tech design, to the red and blue atmospheric lighting, to the droning score that occasionally delves into progressive rock, to the themes of control, pushing beyond the veil, and the dangers of well-meaning but reckless pursuits. To an extent, it does make sense that the makers would want to emulate the style of works from this time-span, as the story is literally about a facility established in 1966 and where it has ended up by 1983. In fact, one of the big overall ideas of the film seems to be about the consequences of the “drug-induced spirituality” movement. Arboria was very much a Timothy Leary type figure, wanting to expand the human consciousness through psychedelics and potentially unsafe methods. He had good intentions but might have been a bit too absorbed in the throng of it all, as he barely reacted when Nyles killed his wife, and instead just went ahead with subjecting his baby girl to the same experience Nyles just went through. It seems as though he was one of those scientist archetypes that views any step forward as a success as long as progress is being made in the study, which probably explains why he went too far with drugs and wound up the debilitated waste that he is in the film proper. Nyles, on the other hand, is very much the classic case of the person who went into the pit and came out worse, or in Jungian terms, he encountered his “shadow self,” but rather than absorbing it, it absorbed him. What was meant to be a benevolent experience that would enrich people has instead turned him into a crazed lunatic with a God complex that’s trying to maintain some form of normal humanity, but clearly can’t. He sees himself as above, so he desires control, and a vulnerable psychic girl is an easy target in his mind (well, as long as he can keep her caged). He seems to be practically obsessed with her, to the point of sexual attraction, which just adds to the disturbed nature of the whole situation, since he’s not only much older than her, but also knew her as a baby. Elena is very much the innocent in all this, as she was subjected to this jacked up lifestyle since birth, and its effects on her have turned her into an imprisoned anomaly among humanity. We sympathize with her, and we want to see her escape from this twisted doctor and the whole facility in general. However, if she were to get out, would the world outside treat her any better? After all, she’s got powers that go beyond human capabilities, and considering how long she was locked up, who knows if she would be able to relate or socialize well? This good-intentioned facility has irreparably messed up the life of an innocent girl and made it so she most likely can’t ever hope for a normal existence. Heck, who knows how much destruction she might cause if something triggers her powers. A decade plus goes by and what do they have to show for their experiments? A psycho and an innocent time-bomb. So, as you can tell, the film certainly has something to say and it’s not very difficult to understand what it’s going for. However, that may be part of the problem. The film, for all its odd and artistic presentation, ultimately amounts to a rather straightforward point that might not have needed all that flair to come across. This might be why the film seemed a bit fanboyish to me, it really came off as if the makers just really liked that era of cinema and wanted to make something like it. Now, as a tribute, it’s rather solid, as they hit on a lot of the touches of style and ideas that were present then. Heck, in the final act, the film almost turns into a semi-slasher movie, which was a genre that was getting popular in the early 80’s. In a way, this film is not only a tribute, but almost a cinematic transition, as if to show the end of one era and the beginning of another, both in film and in culture, like a young person who rebelled in the 60’s now has to face their modern, corporate life in the 80’s, or something like that. So, the film does have something to offer on that front, and I do think that it does a good enough job in execution to keep you going throughout its runtime, but in the end, it just doesn’t seem to amount to too much more. It’s definitely not a bad film, but I wouldn’t call it a great one either. I think it’s just going to be the sort of thing that some people are going to like the style of, and others won’t, and I can see it going either way towards thinking it’s really cool or thinking its pretentious. Anyway, I think I’ve gone on for too long, so I should probably start wrapping things up.
Overall, I would say Beyond the Black Rainbow is a good film. It probably wouldn’t make my favorites list, if I were to make one, but I still enjoyed my time with it on some level. Part of it might be the fact that I’ve seen plenty of films from the time-span it’s emulating, so I appreciated the throwback as well as the fun of noticing all the influences. I would say that Beyond the Black Rainbow is worth watching, but I can’t blame you if you don’t want to watch it again. If you want to see beyond the veil (or just really like art-influenced sci-horror of fifty or so years ago), travel Beyond the Black Rainbow. Thankfully, you won’t end up like Nyles at the end of it……at least I hope not.