Beyond the Limits of Self Control

“Beyond the Black Rainbow” (2010) does look like the kind of film that would easily have caught my attention when rental shelf surfing in the 80s and early 90s and that is as good a compliment as I could provide. I could totally see it next to “This Quiet Earth”, “Repo Man”, “The Incredible Shrinking Man”, “THX 1138”, “The Andromeda Strain”, “Clockwork Orange”, “Scanners” or any number/host of asexually thematic films which mix any number of genres into this unique brew on a rental shelf together.

Black Rainbow will either engage you or not with its deliberately elaborate use of 60s/70s/80s aesthetics (very much punctuating reds, whites, and blacks in its attractively distinct use of color), pacing (purposely glacial as to captivate us with what is being stylistically brought to us visually), subject matter (a new age ideal gone horribly, horribly wrong, with a psychotic in control of an institution, holding his mentor’s daughter captive, as experimental rejects are also revealed as the film continues), shot composition (the two main actors are shot in ways atypical of the usual framing of characters in years prior to 1983, the blurring of the image during key moments when the heroine applies her psychic power), lack of dialogue (this isn’t a film hinging on the words of the characters as much as what they truly want and how they go about getting it), and weird passages (the transcendence sequence, the Sentionaut in a red suit which reaches at a great height but has a white, alien-like baby face, the inert emotional dysfunction of doc and wife). I think a person's specific taste will dictate this film's appeal. You will be turned off by its dramatic peaks and valleys (the main dramatic arc is our hope the young girl can get away from madman doc overseeing her "development", while her doctor's cold behavior and eventual complete move to the darkside might be hard to attach to).

Because the plot is not as important as how the film looks and feels, being a mood piece (the music from Schmidt in spirit with Tangerine Dream), it is essentially about the escape from captivity for a young beauty who never truly knew her parents, while her “doctor” observes, comments, and documents from behind a glass on the other side of her cell. Dr. Aboria (Scott Hylands) had this dream of attaining a spiritual enlightenment applying “pharmacology, nature, and image sculpting” but the experimenting with drugs and a loss of his initial ideals in favor of attaining a society to alter as he sees fit ruins it all. Worse even is Arboria’s decision to have his protégé, Barry (Michael Rogers), achieve a ‘transcendence’ which is forever damaging to his mental stability and facial appearance (his eyes green, turning him bald; he later applies contacts and wears a wig, taking pharmaceutical drugs to contain his psychosis). Killing Arboria’s wife after emerging from a “dip into the path to enlightenment” (and taking a liquid, potent psychotropic drug), Barry is forgiven immediately. It might be considered at this point the downfall of the institute. Further experiments in transcendence caused mutation and a variety of effects to those subject to Arboria and Barry Nile, soon to be discovered by Elena (Eva Bourne) when she escapes her cell. Tests by Barry on Elena to see how powerful her psychic power is prove to him she’s capable of telepathic violence if triggered. A prism in his institute can provoke or subdue Elena and Barry toys with her…particularly when an assistant (Marilyn Norry) is a bit too nosey, peeping at his diabolical and perverse notes detailing schematics, graphic illustrations, ideas, and descriptions, alarming and disturbing (certainly explaining what is going on inside the mind of Barry).

I can see a critical assessment of the film offering problems with something like a close-up of keys laid on a desk, considered rather unnecessary, or how fingers and hands press small and large buttons which open doors or cabinets…director Cosmatos is more concerned with such menial movements than the story.  A face half seen on screen seems purposely shot to look different than the normal camera set up, or an ending that is kind of abrupt after a drawn out escape (Barry goes out to kill his wife, after allowing himself to be free of his constraints of oppression once he follows the request of his mentor to help die through poison, while Elena finally has time to leave her cell and work herself through the institution, going through ducts and rooms, halls and vacant areas of the hospital where no one is around. The hospital to me looks as if it is in a pitiable decline and perhaps in the 60s was a commune for those with similar philosophies and desires for a change spiritually. But the years leading up to 1983 seem to indicate that the ideals once offered pleasantly by Arboria in his advertisement for his institution eventually eroded as Barry’s influence took hold. One scene has Elena walking through a greenhouse as *comfort music* harmonizes, sadly underlying what perhaps was once meant to be for like-minded individuals looking for something much like Arboria. Her freedom as she leaves the greenhouse, with Schmidt's music further explaining about how uplifting it is, was one of my favorite scenes in the film. This freedom for Elena and Barry's freedom of being the psychopath he always wanted to be since his transcendence.

Rogers is as good casting choice for Barry. His controlled mania is visually present, and it was a given he would eventually allow the darkside to emerge from its prison. Once that happens, abandoning the limits of self-imposed exile to his madness, Barry can do whatever he wants. This is fascinatingly developed. Notice how he can’t help himself when provoking Elena’s power. The notes found are certainly examples of the creature that lies behind the skin and bone. How long could Barry hide the deviant inside, that cold-blooded maniac just urging to get away from its restraints?

The use of the 80s song Anonymous concluding the film with the red letter end titles seemed like an appropriate way to close the book on this film very much a love letter by Cosmatos to those film which influenced him in his youth. For me and those who themselves grew up the same way, I think the film might just cast its spell. 

It is too bad those days are over, in regards to the trips to the rental store, scanning the shelves, locating that cult film seemingly ideal for a late night sit. Now it plays on the laptop or ipad, streamed or received in the mail. Lamenting the death of the rental store could be compared to Joe Bob Briggs in his outcry regarding the death of the drive-in. I guess it is just the passage of time. It is nice that filmmakers don't always let go of the past, instead opting to create an experience similar to what used to exist when I popped in that roughly-treated video tape and was treated to something unique and different.