ALTERED STATES (1980; d. Ken Russell, w. "Sidney Aaron"/Paddy Chayefsky)

1st img Dr Eddie Jessup floating in amniotic egg-shaped window (film’s study origins of Man [adult male] in "isolation," he 2001 Starchild at virtual midpoint btwn Kubrick film + actual date, now observed rather’n observing) + looking like Invaders from Mars alien (similarly rudimentary being – all head + little body, ie in dream-state) in Man from Planet X helmet (how motormouth character/s [vs Kubrick’s reticent speakers] come off), suspended in cylinder (phallus, he also sperm cell awaiting cosmic conception) overseen by bearded narrator Arthur (Art, intermediary btwn visionary + physical) on spring day in 1967 (regeneration immediately preceding Summer of Love [+ we won’t talk about what came after]) just before dozing, himself (dreamer of film, EJ his disconnected drm-self + psychic explorer of worlds unknown); roused by EJ’s "Lemme out" (archetype in suspended animation awaiting activation + release into conscious lab), emerging to recount apocalyptic visions (story 2B about resolution of aspect of self/man) + reëxperiencing father’s death (Establishment + obsolete male character), talk continuing outside + into subway (shared journey into male underworld).

At Artie’s party (psychological free-for-all, when various elements o/t Self come out to commingle + pair off in random combinations: interior "social" experiment), EJ meets student Emily (he on radiant threshold – Huxley’s "doors of perception" – while The Doors play in bkgd), whom A has asked to "draw him out" (cf EJ’s "Lemme out", she anima-conductor to visionary experience); physical anthropologist (fem counterpart to right-hand-man A) working on dissertation (ie drama to follow), he exploring "religious experiences" of schizophrenics (ie himself/men, w/ disconnect btwn mind + body/actions [film’s casual attitude twd his violent acts his/men’s own]), his academic blather (visceral-visionary director steamrolling thru hysterical [pseudonymous] script; began career in company of Mahler, Tchaikovsky + DH Lawrence, now down to Paddy Chayefsky + not done slumming yet) resolving w/ "I’d like to go home w/ you" (surplus of intellect + libido w/o linking Heart).

Spouts "God – Christ – Jesus" during sex (recalling atheist conversion at transitional 16: she his "physical anthropologist" – visceral connection to spiritual origins) + blabs about dad’s cancer death at that time (missing ½ of erotic equation, loss of father = loss of Father, humans ½way btwn death of God + 2001 birth of übermann); back in tank (return to introspection following physical therapy: w/o helmet – no cap on/containment of information), has visions of dad’s deathbed (pulling Turin-shroud from face refutation of afterlife vis à vis his last word, "Terrible") + slaughtering ram (à la 7-eyed Beast on cross: also trumping Revelations, new relationship laying to rest grandiose biblical notions of absoluteness + eternity), resolving w/ schizo subject on monitor (à la similarly cameo’d 1st-shot EJ) + Emily’s marriage proposal (resolving schism) countered by his admonition "I’m a little bit nuts" (her rejoinder "You are a Faust freak" fem complaint re men’s reckless pursuit of gratification over domestic sacrifice), he calming after schizo drugged (Em’s influence at work, subject feeling "touch of Christ on [her] heart": EJ’s own remote mouthpiece) + finally accepting (in hallway: birthcanal passage btwn realms in which film also climaxes).

7 yrs later, they’re separating (fatherhood constricting, EJ barely published: still laboring over lack of "religious" connection to family/domestic, focus on Beyond aka Self [Buddhist God he extols]), he going to Mexico to eat mushrooms w/ witch doctor (psychological south, to have transcendent experience w/ ancient figure aka "buried" father/Father), she to Africa to study non-verbal ape communication (touchy-feely language, she anima-investigator into intellectual hubby’s shadow-side); w/ guide Eduardo (not-Eddie, psychopompos conveying him to Other World) in Mexican mountains (heights o/t subconscious), enters vaginal cave-opening (in pursuit of "unborn soul," physical regression before phylogenetic) where mudfaced natives (chthonic Others from which theoretic Anglo removed) boiling down ’shrooms (as will happen to his personality on reaching twd 1st Soul, separation from Emily 1st step), Edenic soup-visions (return to cultural origin 1st) including he + Emily (E+E reunited spiritual self/ves – essences, à la ’shroom brew) covering over w/ sand + blowing away (premonitory fantasy-desire to transcend physical difference), coming-to to gutted lizard at side (serpent menacing Em in dream phallic male pwr threatening fem principle).

Back home, combines extract w/ new isolation tank (bridging primitive + modern: horizontal rather’n vertical orientation replacing phallus w/ womb, MX adventure his insemination), where he feels self becoming proto-man (vs 2001 Nietzschean Last Man, true transcendence in re-collecting animal aspect quickly done away w/ in the Kubrick) + killing goat (à la sex-vision, w/drawal into self masturbation), emerging inarticulate (cf contempo anti-intellectual social climate, w/ attendant Bad Movie vogue + Springsteenian elevation o/t Working Man) + w/ bloody mouth (loss of verbal virginity [or onset of menstruation, ensanguinated cloth à la tampon]); has physical flashback (sfx bladder attack sending him to bathroom from lover’s bed à la ’83 Cat People, where hallucinates ape feet [add American Werewolf in London, the resurging animal in Corporate 80s America]), then meets Emily + daughters at airport (fem img – multiplied for effect – en route to psyche) + takes to new home (vs own new iso-tank: relocation of communal fem aspect to more prominent mental location), he expressing interest in her ape tapes (sounds like own grunts during his simultaneous aphasic episode: "his" recordings, she again psychic investigator doing emotional work he too disconnected to do).

Now that Mason’s taken over lab (mind trying to keep balance btwn bearded, vulgar, rational masculine + visionary fem), begs assistance from Emily (fem influence necessary to safe experimentation) – who thinks he’s on verge of breakdown (definition of analysis, he in fact ready to regress/break self down to primitive constitution [film elaborate update of ’58 Monster on the Campus]) – + he proceeds alone, emerging from tank violent apeman (consequence of no fem blnc) who bludgeons watchmen w/ pipe (elimination of pilot-light consciousness + dream-censors holding back wild primal material) before hitting zoo (animal preserve w/i all civilization) to have sheep dinner (living out earlier vision, he become ancestral "father"), where attendant finds him naked next morning (reborn in evolutionary Eden; again à la AmWolf); following dream of EJ running w/ dogs (own liberated masculine aspect à la WMN WHO RUN W/T WOLVES), Em signs on + invites him to stay (desire for own primal masc pwr; reversal of his original meet-cute self-invitation, relationship also starting over).

Security guard (inhibiting ego-conscious authority) dead, EJ goes in tank (on monitor, à la schizo subject: detachment from reality isolation w/ several separate selves w/o jurisdiction o/t unifying ego), where he freaks out (spliced w/ shot of cave-vagina: alone w/ archaic pre-evolutionary fem self-img), blast when Mason opens tank (force of unleashed cultural repressions) knocking Arthur out (total disengagement from narrating Personality [+ ostensibly from manipulating Art/ist], mind free now to let fly), lights going out when Emily similarly KO’d (disconnection from dayworld order + physical perception); she revives (resuscitation of own fem element) to see pulsating mass in tank (cf 50s Blob movies, especially X the Unknown’s similar blob-in-observation-chamber; eventually resembles rudimentary [cf opening shot] ’82 Basket-Case Belial) which becomes swirling mist enveloping lab (Unconscious engulfing consciousness in dream), at center of which EJ becomes gaping mouth (yonic fem origin) then zygote, corpuscles, cosmos etc (regressing thru entire planet/universe’s evolution, EJ thinly-disguised Ken Wilber surrogate living out his theories) till Em pulls him out (again reborn, this time c/o own fem counterpart) + A+M awake (reengaged mind+body at end of drm).

Back home again (viewed thru windows: KO’d mind regarding aggregate self: body-Mason, mind-Art + soul-Emily), Em feels superfluous ("he got it on w/ God"/"at one w/t Absolute" patti smith-talk, "I can’t get him out of me"/"I’m possessed by him" impregnation: having given re-birth to him, now contains seeds of own greatness) while A+M argue (dualistic m/b schism yet unresolved: more work ahead); next a.m., EJ tells Art over phone (mind connecting w/ remote otherself, à la similar calls) of his gratitude twd Emily + kids (cf "nothing" truth he formerly pursued [oriented now twd mediating Heart], which he sez is in him now [à la her "possession" by him: masculine project self-obliviation – cf Incredible Shrinking Man, Last Man on Earth, et al – fem project self-realization]) just before flashback starts him mutating (Em’s "Defy it!" domesticated fem in self resisting atavistic brutality), their touch blowing them apart (not physical issue: inner work 2B done 1st) + causing her to mutate (male transformation will spur fem’s), one-armed EJ (semi-castrated) pounding way down hall (releasing animal/testosteronal fury, hallway birth-canal à la earlier proposal scene, battering as against physical barriers/difference) till, reconstituted (driven not by hormones but by emotions), embraces her volcanic body (acceptance of dynamic femininity) before both dis/appear (replacement of obsolete selves w/ new) + he declares "I love you, Emily" at fadeout (resolution not in cosmic Starchild but in domestic couple, more Rodin than Redon).

Blueprint for vastly similar ’83 Brainstorm, w/ far more progressive (+ convulsive) finale.