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Beyond the Black Rainbow: Hipster Indie

By Brock Wilbur · May 19, 2012

Completed in 2010, Panos Cosmatos' debut film Beyond the Black Rainbow is finally seeing American distribution. Does this matter to you? Here's a quick test: Imagine David Lynch was hired to adapt a William S. Burroughs novel, with some restrictions: the only actor he could use was a Blue Velvet era Dennis Hopper, Andrei Tarkovsky would edit, and Angelo Badalamenti could only use pre-made 80's Saturday morning cartoons to create the soundtrack. (Actually, that last part isn't a huge stretch, but still…)

Take that creative configuration, pull it back 25%, and give it 110 minutes in a dystopian 1983. Then make it Canadian. If you're the kinda of film nerd to find yourself sexually aroused and/or bleeding from the eyes with excitement: Congratulations! Hop on down to the local Cineplex! Everyone else: please note that Battleship would LOVE your $15 right about now.

This experimental feature follows the attempted escape of Elena (Eva Allan) from a research facility, where her handler Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers) has become obsessed with using her to live out a pseudo-sexual fantasy. Other than the dying scientist Mercurio Arboria (Scott Hylands), there are few discernible characters or locations. Elena never speaks, except in psychic-asides, so the story plays out either via Barry's dialogue or via non-narrative sub-chapters (which are some of the film's weaker moments). Post-production in general seems a major weakness of the film, as the fantastic production design is killed by cheap filters. Although with so much of the visual aesthetic serving as an assault on the viewer's senses, it's difficult to tell where the intentional bad ends and the independent filmmaking begins… which I think I mean as a compliment? Not that I want to re-watch a film in which the first hour is spent sending every. single. shot. into and out of focus—my eyes are still throbbing.

It's a slow film; Kubrick/Tarkovsky slow. But it maintains a strong tension throughout, only veering too far off the path in some of the extended, removed passages. One section in particular feels like the b-roll from Fincher's Dragon Tattoo credit sequence, but stretched to a breaking point and lacking the Reznor score. Other segments seem to owe debts of gratitude to Logan's Run, Aliens, Sin City, and the video game Portal. We're lead astray tonally by so many varied ideas that what was once a sci-fi think-piece now ends up surprisingly as a slasher-film with dabs of art school in between. It feels reductive to call the film out for being too "art school," but by the end of what I think was act two, it's simply an unavoidable critique. I lost what everyone was doing until Elena found herself trapped in a room with a super-unintentionally-hilarious monster. If the presence of a nightmare mutant is where I find my narrative footing, then yeah, maybe it's not for everyone.

What is the message? Although abandoned by the finale, the jumping off point seems to be a pursuit of "happiness" and the application of serious, measurable progress towards a near medical solution. The fall-off, involving the same scientists touting this lifestyle and subjecting others to it while being addicted to medication, takes a viewpoint akin to most Scientology substance-abuse films I've seen, or at least their presentations in the anti-psychiatric museum. I wanted so much more from this thematic exploration; which starts in a simple yet disarming sequence of Barry mechanically swallowing ten blue pills in a single shot. By the mid-point, it's clear that we're dealing with some bigger questions about life tragedy, the human soul, and sexual confusion, but again these threads are all but ignored in favor of a visceral, jokey textbook horror finale which doesn't fail the think-piece that precedes it, but still disappoints.

I didn't know how much I wanted this film to be real. Growing up, I'd always wanted to be a scientist, until I came to realize that I was just pining for the unobtainable goal of being a mad-super-scientist. Turns out nothing of what Saturday morning cartoons pitched me about the whole science-racket had anything to do with real science classes; at least not the biology class I took in Salina, KS. So to see that world I pined for brought to life here is personally satisfying. Giant rooms filled with odd, flashing lights and dials that correspond to computer read-outs, or the control of psychic-reality… Yeah, this is what you'd expect from someone about to take on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—or the indie festival circuit.

Beyond The Black Rainbow is the kind of film we don't see nearly enough of these days, although having just sat through it, I think I can say Beyond The Black Rainbow is the kind of film we see exactly enough of these days. I believe it achieves all that it set out to be, and every twenty minutes or so contains just enough intrigue or surprise to keep you moving, but it's hard to love a movie that doesn't love you back unless there's a lot more there to make it worth your while.