Altered States

Altered States

Title : Altered States
Year of production : 1980
Director : Ken Russell
Screen-writer : Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Aaron
Lead actors : William Hunt, Blair Brown and Bob Balaban
Running time : 102 minutes

FILM REVIEW

Set in New York City and Boston in the 1960s-1970s, the opening scene of the movie shows Eddie Jessup, a university scientist, inside an isolation tank. Throughout the film Eddie experiments with the isolation tank, eventually deciding to intensify the effects of sensory deprivation by taking hallucinatory mushrooms given to him by a tribe from Mexico. Eddie thinks that by doing these experiments he will be able to find the fundamental theory of the self and the meaning of human existence. The protagonist starts to look into these hallucinations and continues his experiments in the isolation tank. One of the last times Eddie uses the hallucination drug in the isolation tank, his illusions become real and he turns into an ape-like human and finds his way to a zoo where he kills a goat and eats its flesh. The last part of the movie emphasizes Eddie's wife and his research associates trying to reverse the effects of Eddie's illusions since they might cause him irreparable damage, such as completely disappearing as he is going against the evolution of man.

The plot is pretty clear throughout the movie. It is easy to understand the timeline of the film and why things are happening. A hole in the plot would be the reasons for why Eddie's hallucinations are becoming real. At first it was hard to understand whether Eddie's hallucinations were real and was he experiencing them in the real world or if he was simply experiencing them in his head. But then, at the end of the movie we understand that he was experiencing these illusions in the real world and that they were threatening him. Another hole in the plot would be how was he able to become an ape but then be able to come back to the normal self. It makes viewers wonder how he could always go back to a farther state of evolution while also be able to go back to his normal self. It is hard to understand how this was possible scientifically.

The film is mainly set in the research lab where Eddie works. The laboratory is very dark and is where the isolation tank is. The lab is located in a basement and is very dark and isolated from everything. The isolation from other people and labs suggests that the research they are doing is not very highly regarded and that they wish to keep it secret from other people. The laboratory setting also seemed very unsafe and alarming which is comparable to what was going on with Eddie and his experiments. Some scenes of the film take place in domestic places such as Emily’s home or the apartment that Eddie and Emily share before they are getting divorced. The domestic scenes have much warmer light and had more color. For example, the walls in Emily’s home have color and there are accessories throughout the home which gives it more of a warm feeling. The domestic scenes contrast the scenes shot in Eddie’s research lab as the scenes in the lab have very harsh, dark lighting and very bland color while the scenes shot in the homes are light and have more color.


The characters in this film are made up of intellectuals who like taking risks. Eddie Jessup, portrayed by William Hurt, is the main character of the film and he can be described as very intelligent, distant and self-centered. He is a man obsessed with his research and even puts his own life at risk through his need for knowledge. Throughout the movie his character evolves and becomes even more of a risk taker. Eddie also started dating Emily, played by Blair Brown, is another important character who is aspiring to become an Anthropology professor, they end up getting married and got two children. However, they got divorced due to the fact that Eddie is to much into his research but they still love each other and will stay side by side throughout most of the film. Emily is a very intense character similar to Eddie but she is also different than Eddie as she is able to see limits in her research. You can see that Emily is a very loving person as even after her and Eddie are divorced she shows concern for him and is very worried about him due to his limitless scientific research and the harm he is causing himself.

The main actors consisting of William Hurt, Bob Balaban, Charles Haid and Blair Brown was well chosen for this film because they are all excellent actors who blended well together. They acted in a way that made us believe in the story and let us get into it just like if it was happening right in front of our eyes. Name name---who plays Eddie is very good at showing how demonstrating how intense Eddie is and how dedicated he is to his work, Eddie's character progresses (and even regresses) throughout the movie and the actor does a very good job or changing emotions and actions with those changes. However, some actors were almost like props, stock characters, they were simply selected to fill small roles and take almost just take up space. They did not add anything to the film, the secondary characters such as the people from the Mexican tribe and some of the police officer/ security guard seemed to be missing any kind of theatrical quality.

The film showed both film making techniques and techniques in the actual story. One of the techniques used in the film is foreshadowing. After Eddie's first use of the isolation tank under the influence of the medication he has blood coming out his mouth so the doctor performs an x-ray which demonstrates that his neck looks similar to that of a primate. This foreshadows Eddie's eventual hallucination that turns him temporarily into a primate.

The film used filming techniques as well. The director of the movie used long plan and shades to represent characters. They also used close-up on Eddies face when he was in the isolation tank to show us his physical experience and also to show his facial impression to show us when he was in distress mentally. It was usually used before and during hallucination. They used flashbacks of the beginning of time to show that the main character was exploring the oldest of time such as the time of Jesus which explains the religious hallucinations. They also used a lot of cuts between scene to demonstrate that it was two things completely separated from each other. For example, Eddie's situation versus the ones who were observing the scene from the window--sometimes this creates more drama and quickens the pace. Special effects were used during Eddie’s hallucinations. During the hallucination where he completely transforms into a primate sounds are used to make him seem very scary and the world seems sort of distorted. Special effects are also used at the very end of the film when they are attempting to reverse the damage Eddie has done through his hallucinations. These special effects including smoke and vivid color are used to make the scene more intense and also give viewers insight to what Eddie is experiencing in his head. This is a very intense scene that is enhanced even more with the use of special effects.

The main themes that this movie shows are the many states of consciousness that a human can access, the power of human love, madness vs genius and how humans across cultures are exploring the different states of consciousness to gain insights or truths into the nature of existence and the meaning of life . First of all, Eddie’s goal is to discover and access many states of consciousness, find out what the effects of it are and how they influence the mental and physical health of the humans. In others words, he is trying to find and unlock new things about the states of consciouness and the self. He found a tribe in Mexico that was willing to let Eddie try their own hallucinatory drug and to offer some to him after. Eddie accepted and found out that this drug was powerful and decided to test it in the university. However, his experiments turned out to be very dangerous for him. His friends and family tried to warn him and asked him to stop but, he is so willing to find answers to his questions that he doesn't listen to what his family and friends were saying to him, especially Emily and Doctor Masson. The problem is, Eddie was so devoted to his research that he didn't listen to their warnings. Eddie is a very intelligent scientist and he probably knew what he was doing when his experiments got out of hand but, he wanted to do more and more. His intelligence slowly turned to madness. Eddie was ready to risk everything to conduct his experiments to an end, without thinking about the consequences.  He wasn’t careful anymore, all he wanted was to prove everything he saw and experienced in the isolation tank. Also, Eddie had a relationship with a woman named Emily, an anthropologist teacher. Eddie's experiments were so important to him that he slowly turned his back on Emily. Eddie and Emily were engaged and they had their own little family. But, their relationship took a bad turn when Eddie’s experiments became dangerous and out of hand. They got divorced and Emily went to Africa with their children, for her own job. She still had feelings for Eddie and still cared a lot about him. Eddie, not so much.  He was so hopelessly devoted to find answers about the self and the states of consciousness that he forgot about his love for Emily. She couldn’t stand what Eddie what doing to himself so she came back and tried to help Eddie. Emily tried to make things work by asking Eddie to stop his dangerous experiments but he didn't listen to her and kept going.

WORD COUNT : 2002

Appreciation :

This movie contained a lot of things that someone could either love or hate. First, Emily’s charisma was adorable. She was always there to help Eddie, even if he turned his back to her in the first place. She never gave up on him. Her unconditional love for Eddie made her do everything she could to save him. This affection and love of Emily for Eddie brought a warm and human touch to this dark and bizarre movie. Also, even though it wasn’t very clear in the movie, Albert cared a lot of Eddie too. He always kept an eye on Eddie and supported him in his experiments. His intentions were subtler than Emily’s but still, Albert cared too. Another thing that someone could love about that movie was the sarcasm and humor in the movie. Doctor Masson often used sarcasm to describe Eddie’s experiments. This sarcasm was well used because it made us laugh in this movie that doesn’t seem funny at all. But, this movie contained things that someone could also hate. The topic of the movie is not something known by everyone and it was sometimes confusing. Also, the scene where Eddie turns into an ape form and then goes back to a human one was confusing. We don’t how he turned into that and we have no idea on how he went back to the human form. Some details and information were missing for that part and led to confusion. The main problem of this movie is that some parts were confusing and it affected our comprehension of the movie.

Course Connections

1)Throughout the film the idea of state consciousness is often brought up such as in the title. Eddie experiences many different states of consciousness throughout the film. When Eddies is in the isolation tank he is not awake yet in a state of consciousness, he is in a state of deprivation where he is able to talk to his assistant and be emotional but cannot remember what happened. The second state would be simply the awake state in which he finds himself in his everyday life and then a third one would be when Eddie turns into a primate as he is a complete different self. This leads us to the second connection being the self.

2) The idea that we as humans have one unified self is tested in this film as Eddie able to temporarily become a primate. The film raises the problem of the self as Eddie is able to be different people when he is in a state of hallucination than when he is not. Eddie argued that the self comes from our knowledge and memory and has he said: " He] know[s] where the Self is. It's in our own mind. It's a form of human energy. Our atoms are six billion years old. We've got six billion years of memory in our mind." Just like Locke, he believed that it is in our memory that we find our self.

3)The third connection in this movie is the core self which is the self that maintains the basic level of coordination of the bodily functions and the behaviour. Eddie mentions that while he is in the isolation tank he only has a basic level of coordination but has no qualia of experiences at all which causes him to have no self-awareness. Also, when he regresses in time,  he is not self-aware of what is going on removing any self-aware self and only leaving him with a core/minimal self.

Question for the readers :

1. What does the basement location of Eddie's research suggest?
2. Why would Eddie, a man with a wife, family and with a great intellectual capacity, let himself get so deep into such a harmful field or research?
3. At what point does a scientific research become unsafe or unethical?

Works Cited

IMDb. "Altered States (1980)." IMDb. IMDb.com, 1980. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

 Maslin, Janet. "Screen: Ken Russell’s’ Altered States" The New York Times. N.p., 25 Dec. 1980. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.