10-30-2013, 07:41 AM
I've recently come across this weird, hypnotic trip of a movie, "a Reagan-era fever dream" "set in the strange and oppressive emotional landscape of the year 1983". It still doesn't let me go. One critic put it like this: "As if Kubrick's 2001 had an evil horror twin." Also notable is certainly a large influence of Tarkovsky's filmic concept of "frozen time", as found in his Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1978).
Similar to Cronenberg and his Videodrome (1983), Canadian director Cosmatos was inspired to his own Beyond the black rainbow, an hommage to 1980s b-horror and sci-fi, already in his childhood, when he used to frequent the local video rental back in the early 80s, looking at the covers of horror and sci-fi movies he was not allowed to watch, and imagining what they would be like. Additionally, Cosmatos wanted his film to resemble Elias Merhige's experimental horror movie Begotten (1990) as a fever dream of a half-forgotten artifact.
Beyond the black rainbow is the result, "a film that didn't exist", as director Cosmatos put it, as if a lost, forgotten b-movie of the early 80s has been re-discovered. It is also a dark parable on the naive dreams of New Age sects that usually ended in authoritarian control nightmares.
Two caveats apply: The film is rated R and holds a few accordingly gory effects for a sci-fi horror piece. On the other hand, you shouldn't watch it if you're expecting fast car chases, many explosions, and a complex plot with many twists. The plot is simple: A New Age commune and institute founded in the 1960s, that by the early 1980s had become an oppressive nightmare. If there's any artistic complaint to be made about Beyond the black rainbow, it's that it veers dangerously close to risking a "style over substance" charge, as those unwarrantedly hurled against Terry's movies.
This film is, first and foremost, about mood and atmosphere, like a dark, hypnotic, first-hand acid trip. Just like 2001, almost every single shot looks like a painting, the pacing is similar to Kubrick's masterpiece as well as to Tarkovsky's "frozen time", and its retro analogue synthesizer soundtrack is as effective and hypnotic as Popul Vuuh's for Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972). Other references that came to mind while watching it were Godfrey Reggio's monumental experimental documentary Koyaanisqatsi (1982) and Douglas Trumbull's sci-fi thriller Brainstorm (1983), and the production design is somewhat similar to Kubrick's other visionary masterpiece A Clockwork Orange (1971), George Lucas's THX 1138 (1971), and John Carpenter's dark sci-fi comedy Dark Star (1974).
http://www.magnetreleasing.com/beyondtheblackrainbow/#
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Black_Rainbow
Similar to Cronenberg and his Videodrome (1983), Canadian director Cosmatos was inspired to his own Beyond the black rainbow, an hommage to 1980s b-horror and sci-fi, already in his childhood, when he used to frequent the local video rental back in the early 80s, looking at the covers of horror and sci-fi movies he was not allowed to watch, and imagining what they would be like. Additionally, Cosmatos wanted his film to resemble Elias Merhige's experimental horror movie Begotten (1990) as a fever dream of a half-forgotten artifact.
Beyond the black rainbow is the result, "a film that didn't exist", as director Cosmatos put it, as if a lost, forgotten b-movie of the early 80s has been re-discovered. It is also a dark parable on the naive dreams of New Age sects that usually ended in authoritarian control nightmares.
Two caveats apply: The film is rated R and holds a few accordingly gory effects for a sci-fi horror piece. On the other hand, you shouldn't watch it if you're expecting fast car chases, many explosions, and a complex plot with many twists. The plot is simple: A New Age commune and institute founded in the 1960s, that by the early 1980s had become an oppressive nightmare. If there's any artistic complaint to be made about Beyond the black rainbow, it's that it veers dangerously close to risking a "style over substance" charge, as those unwarrantedly hurled against Terry's movies.
This film is, first and foremost, about mood and atmosphere, like a dark, hypnotic, first-hand acid trip. Just like 2001, almost every single shot looks like a painting, the pacing is similar to Kubrick's masterpiece as well as to Tarkovsky's "frozen time", and its retro analogue synthesizer soundtrack is as effective and hypnotic as Popul Vuuh's for Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972). Other references that came to mind while watching it were Godfrey Reggio's monumental experimental documentary Koyaanisqatsi (1982) and Douglas Trumbull's sci-fi thriller Brainstorm (1983), and the production design is somewhat similar to Kubrick's other visionary masterpiece A Clockwork Orange (1971), George Lucas's THX 1138 (1971), and John Carpenter's dark sci-fi comedy Dark Star (1974).
http://www.magnetreleasing.com/beyondtheblackrainbow/#
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Black_Rainbow