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Beyond the Black Rainbow

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Beyond the Black Rainbow
Theatrical release poster
Directed byPanos Cosmatos
Screenplay byPanos Cosmatos
Produced byOliver Linsley
Christya Nordstokke
StarringMichael Rogers
Eva Allan
Scott Hylands
Marilyn Norry
Rondel Reynoldson
CinematographyNorm Li
Edited byNicholas T. Shepard
Music bySinoia Caves
Production
company
Chromewood Productions
Distributed byMagnet Releasing[1]
Release date
Running time
110 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1,100,000 (estimated)

Beyond the Black Rainbow is a 2010 Canadian science fiction film written and directed by Panos Cosmatos, his feature film debut. The film stars Michael Rogers as "Dr. Barry Nyle". It was produced and filmed in Vancouver, and premiered at the 2010 Whistler Film Festival.[2] It also showed at several film festivals throughout 2011, including Tribeca in New York City[3] and Fantasia in Montreal.[4] Magnet Releasing, the genre division of Magnolia Pictures, has picked up the film for US theatrical release.[1]

Plot

In the 1960s, Dr. Arboreum founds the Arboreum Institute, a New Age research facility dedicated to finding a reconciliation between science and spirituality that will allow human beings to move into a new age of perpetual happiness.

In the 1980s, Arboreum's work has been taken over by his protege, Dr. Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers). Outwardly a charming, handsome scientist, Nyle is in fact a psychopath who has been keeping a teenage girl named Elena (Eva Allan) captive in an elaborate prison/hospital beneath the Institute. Elena demonstrates psychic capabilities, which Nyle is capable of suppressing by way of a glowing, prism-like device located somewhere in the building. In an effort to understand Elena's abilities, Nyle subjects her to daily therapy sessions which take the form of interrogations, during which Elena rarely speaks. By night, Elena is kept in a brightly-lit, completely white room, with only a television for companionship. Nyle spends his own nights at home with his wife, a docile, servile woman who gives Nyle endless praise and exists in a state of constant stupor. Nyle, for his own part, takes massive quantities of prescription medication, and disguises his lack of hair or color in his irses by way of elaborate wigs and contact lenses.

Attempting to elicit an emotional response from Elena, Nyle presents her with a photograph of her mother, who died in childbirth. Nyle then informs Elena's nurse, Margo, that Elena has somehow smuggled contraband into her room. When Margo attempts to forcibly take the photo from Elena, Elena kills her by causing her head to explode.

Intrigued by this blatant display of psychic ability, Nyle allows Elena to escape her room, but nonetheless activates the device in order to suppress her abilities. The activation causes Elena to pass out; while she is unconscious, Elena is approached by a giant individual in a space suit (identified in the credits as "Sentionaut") who injects her with a syringe before wandering off.

Nyle goes to see Dr. Arboreum, now aged and being kept alive by a series of machines somewhere on the grounds of the Institute. Displaying signs of senility, Arboreum remains ignorant of Nyle's evil nature, regarding him as his best protege. A flashback to the 1960s reveals that Elena's mother was Dr. Arboreum's wife, who was present when Arboreum led a young Nyle through a procedure meant to allow him to achieve transcendence. As a part of the procedure, Nyle was submerged in a vat of dark liquid; Nyle emerged from the vat hysterical and fatally attacked Mrs. Arboreum. Elena was born shortly thereafter.

In the present, Elena continues her escape, encountering a zombie-like creature in an air shaft, as well as an entire room full of immobile sentionauts, who are revealed to be emaciated, sexless, skeletal entities.

At home, Nyle presents himself to his wife without his wig or contacts, then kills her.

Escaping from the Institute, Elena ventures into the wilderness. Nyle follows her, killing two campers he encounters on the way. Nyle finally corners Elena in a clearing, where he confronts her with a knife. Elena uses her telekinesis to fling Nyle down onto a rock, crushing his skull.

Free of her captors, Elena wanders towards a nearby town.

Development

As a kid Cosmatos used to frequent a video store entitled Video Addict. During these trips he would frequently browse the horror movie section looking at the boxes although he was not allowed to watch such movies. During such times he would instead imagine what the movie was. He would later reflect upon this experience when making Black Rainbow where one of his goals was "to create a film that is a sort of imagining of an old film that doesn’t exist." The year 1983 was chosen for the storyline as it's the first year he went to Video Addict. Additionally he thought the idea of setting such a film one year before 1984 was funny.[5]

The movie's genesis was an overlap between two projects Cosmatos wanted to do. One of these was a movie about a girl trapped in an asylum while the other was an installation promoting a research facility that didn't exist. Eventually Cosmatos realized that he could use both ideas in the same project.[5]

Style

Visuals

Beyond the Black Rainbow has been praised for its visual style. Cosmatos declared that his "modernist" use of color was influenced by Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986) and The Keep (1983).[6] The blue hue cinematography - the "night mode" as Cosmatos dubbed it - was inspired by the freezer room scene in John Carpenter's Dark Star (1974).[7] A number of reviewers noted similarities between Beyond the Black Rainbow and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971).[8] "I love Stanley Kubrick, and have seen, and probably internalized, all of his work, but any similarity was not my intent", explained Cosmatos.[9] Critics have also compared Beyond the Black Rainbow to Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972),[10][11][12] Ken Russell's Altered States (1980),[13][14] and Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void (2010).[14] Of the latter, the director deemed it "a very interesting, very beautiful film."[2]

According to Cosmatos, the "rigid geometric world" of the Arboria Institute visually fits on the main themes of the movie: control. This is especially true for the Dr. Nyles character, someone "very knowledged, trying to create a very controlled environment to give himself a feeling of power."[15] The visual reference for Arboria Institute's indoor design was George Lucas' THX 1138 (1971).[16]

The 1966 flashback segment of the movie was inspired E. Elias Merhige's experimental horror film Begotten (1990). Begotten was entirely shot in high contrast black and white, which for Cosmatos "was a perfect look for the flashback because I wanted it to feel like a fading and decayed artifact." The young Barry Niles's acid trip in that segment of Beyond the Black Rainbow was inspired by the "Battle of the Gods" sequence in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (1963).[16]

Cosmatos also takes influence from other visual media. The director declared his love for Heavy Metal magazine and the work of French comics artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud. Fantasy art was also an influence, especially Frank Frazetta's paintings.[2]

Pacing

One of Beyond the Black Rainbow notable characteristics is its deliberatly slow, hypnotic pace. According to Cosmatos, Beyond the Black Rainbow belongs to what he dubbed the "trance film" subgenre.[16] Cosmatos mentioned Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad (1961) and Saul Bass's Phase IV (1974) as cinematographic blueprints for his debut film.[15][17] Cosmatos explained the rationale behind his screenwriting, which downplays the "very concrete story at the heart of it" in favor of an "atmospheric" approach:

I decided to just write as straightforward as possible, then let the visuals and the look of the film bloom around something that was pretty straightforward. At the end of the day, I decided to bring down the story elements to allow the visual and the story elements to come more into the foreground, to make it more dream-like and less story-driven.[17]

Music

Jeremy Schmidt, keyboard player for Vancouver-based rockers Black Mountain, was invited by Cosmatos to compose the movie's soundtrack. "Evil Ball", a track from Schmidt's solo project, Sinoia Caves, was used by the movie's director on a private screening held for Schmidt. A mutual appreciation for Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter soundtracks and Giorgio Moroder's music for American Gigolo (1980) cemented their bond.[18] Schmidt also pointed out the background music from The Shining (1980) and Risky Business (1983) as musical blueprints for the Beyond the Black Rainbow score.[19]

Regarding the impact of The Shining's soundtrack on his score, Schmidt singled out the compositions by György Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki as sonic touchstones.[20] Their music had already been featured the sci-fi and horror genres, two of Cosmatos main cinematic obsessions when young.[21] Ligeti pieces "Lux Aeterna" and "Atmosphères" had been featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey,[22] and Penderecki's "Polymorphia" and a portion of "The Devils of Loudun" was used in The Exorcist (1973).[23]

For his analog synth score, Schmidt used the following equipment: a Prophet 5, two Oberheims, Moog Taurus bass pedals, a Korg CX-3 organ and a Mellotron. An extensive use of the Mellotron can be heard on the "flashback" sequence, where Cosmatos had been using Pink Floyd's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" as a temp track.[20] All in all, "the chosen palette of sounds definitely harkens back to 'The New Age of Enlightenment'", said Schmidt.[19]

Themes

Baby Boomer criticism

Cosmatos admits a dislike for Baby Boomer's spiritual ideals, an issue he adresses in Beyond the Black Rainbow. For him, the Boomer's search for alternative belief systems made them dabble in the dark side of occultism, which in turn corrupted their quest for spiritual enlightment.[6] The use of psychedelic drugs for mind-expansion purposes is also explored,[24] although Cosmonatos's take on it is "dark and disturbing", a "brand of psychedelia that stands in direct opposition to the flower child, magic mushroom peace trip" wrote a reviewer.[25] UGO's Jordan Hoffman noted both elements, stating in his review that in the movie some "up-to-no-good new age scientists have let their experiments with consciousness-altering drugs mutate a young woman"[14] - in this case, Elena. Cosmatos explains why Dr. Arboria's mission to create a superior human being ultimately failed:

I look at Arboria as kind of naïve. He had the best of intentions of wanting to expand human consciousness, but I think his ego got in the way of that and ultimately it turned into a poisonous, destructive thing. Because Arboria is trying to control consciousness and control the mind. There is a moment of truth in the film where the whole thing starts to disintegrate because it’s stops being about their humanity and becomes about an unattainable goal. That is the "Black Rainbow": trying to achieve some kind of unattainable state that is ultimately, probably destructive.[26]

Reagan-era paranoia

Beyond the Black Rainbow has been called a "Reagan-era fever dream".[9] Its paranoid, 1980s Cold War mood contains nods to the late US president - through clips of ominous televised speeches by Ronald Reagan himself - and former Panamenian general and convicted drug lord Manuel Noriega (Dr. Nyles's "Noriega" jacket).[27][28] The South American dictator had direct involvement in the "Iran-Contra" scandal. Noriega's fight against the Sandinistas, Nicaragua's left-wing guerrillas, was backed up by the CIA and the Pentagon. The CIA funded Noriega's military campaign with profits from the illegal sale of arms to Iran. The CIA also turned a blind eye to Noriega's drug trafficking.[29]

Reception

Currently, the film has a rating of 46% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 23 reviews and an average score of 5.4/10.[30]

References

  1. ^ a b Kay, Jeremy (May 18, 2011). "Beyond The Black Rainbow attracts Magnet for US". Screen Daily. Retrieved August 4, 2011.
  2. ^ a b c Macaulay, Scott (May 16, 2012.). "Panos Cosmatos, Beyond the Black Rainbow" (web). Filmmaker. Retrieved December 23, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ "Beyond the Black Rainbow". 2011 Tribeca Film Festival Film Guide. Retrieved August 4, 2011.
  4. ^ "Beyond the Black Rainbow". 2011 Fantasia International Film Festival Film Guide. Retrieved August 4, 2011.
  5. ^ a b Brown, Phi (June 6, 2012.). "Interview:Beyond The Black Rainbow Director Panos Cosmatos" (web). Dork Shelf. Retrieved November 05 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  6. ^ a b Nelson, Noah (November 15, 2011.). "Journey 'Beyond the Black Rainbow' with director Panos Cosmatos" (web). Turnstyle. Retrieved December 13, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ Miller, Josua (June 18, 2012.). "Interview: Panos Cosmatos (Beyond the Black Rainbow)" (web). CHUD.com. Retrieved December 12, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ "Review - "Beyond the Black Rainbow"" (web). From the Front Row. June 3, 2012. Retrieved December 13, 2012.
  9. ^ a b Ackerman, Emily (May 10, 2012.). "A Trippy, Dystopian Futurescape" (web). TribecaFilm.com. Retrieved December 13, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ Anderson, Jason. "Analogue Dreams: Panos Cosmatos' Beyond the Black Rainbow" (web). cinema scope. Retrieved April 15, 2012.
  11. ^ Hoff, Al (June 13, 2012.). "Beyond the Black Rainbow" (web). Pittsburgh City Paper. Retrieved April 15, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ Kay, Tony (June 22, 2012.). "Traveling Beyond the Black Rainbow with Director Panos Cosmatos" (web). The SunBreak. Retrieved April 15, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  13. ^ Turek, Ryan (April 23, 2011.). "Exclusive Tribeca 2011 Interview: Panos Cosmatos" (web). Shock Till You Drop. Retrieved December 22, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. ^ a b c Hoffman, Jordan (April 25, 2011.). "Can You Handle the Trip Beyond the Black Rainbow?" (web). UGO - Daily Geek News Videos. Retrieved December 23, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  15. ^ a b Patches, Matt (May 5, 2011.). "Interview: Panos Cosmatos Takes Us Back to the Past to the Future in 'Beyond the Black Rainbow'" (web). Film School Rejects. Retrieved December 22, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  16. ^ a b c Simpson, Don (June 21, 2012.). "Panos Cosmatos (Beyond the Black Rainbow) / Interview" (web). Smells Like Screen Spirit. Retrieved December 22, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  17. ^ a b Truax, Jackson (June 22, 2012.). "Writer/Director Panos Cosmatos on his new film "Beyond the Black Rainbow"" (web). Living in Cinema. Retrieved March 22, 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  18. ^ Mack, Adrian (July 04, 2012.). "Sinoia Caves scores Beyond the Black Rainbow" (web). Georgia Straight. Retrieved December 13, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  19. ^ a b Janisse, Kier-La (September 01, 2011.). "Wasn't the Future Wonderful?" (web). Spectacular Optical. Retrieved December 12, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  20. ^ a b Macinnis, Allan (July 04, 2012.). "Beyond the Black Mountain: Jeremy Schmidt interview re: Sinoia Caves and Beyond the Black Rainbow" (web). Alienated in Vancouver. Retrieved December 12, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  21. ^ Mack, Adrian (July 04, 2012.). "Beyond the Black Rainbow director Panos Cosmatos brings a head trip to the big screen" (web). Georgia Straight. Retrieved December 13, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  22. ^ Cunbow, Robert (1996). 2001: A Space Odyssey (Media notes). Los Angeles, CA: Rhino Movie Music. p. 19. {{cite AV media notes}}: |format= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |albumlink= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |artist= ignored (|others= suggested) (help)
  23. ^ Burlingame, Jon (1998). The Exorcist (Media notes). Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. p. 6. {{cite AV media notes}}: |format= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |albumlink= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |artist= ignored (|others= suggested) (help)
  24. ^ Marsh, James (September 25, 2011.). "FANTASTIC FEST 2011: BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW Review" (web). Film School Rejets. Retrieved April 14, 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  25. ^ Beggs, Scott (November 9, 2011.). "Fantastic Review: 'Beyond The Black Rainbow' is the Best Example of Whatever The Hell It Is" (web). twitch. Retrieved April 14, 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  26. ^ Reid, Joseph (May 12, 2011.). "Panos Cosmatos "Beyond the Black Rainbow"" (web). COOL -Creator's Infinite Links-. Retrieved April 14, 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  27. ^ Lybarger, Dan (June 17, 2012.). "Reel Reviews/June 2012" (web). kc/active. Retrieved December 18, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  28. ^ Klymkiw, Greg (October 4, 2012.). "BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW: Cool Canadian Cult Picture on Blu-Ray from Mongrel Media" (web). Klymkiw Film Corner. Retrieved December 17, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  29. ^ Murillo, Luis. (1995). The Noriega mess: the drugs, the canal, and why America invaded. Berkeley, CA: Video Books.
  30. ^ "BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW Movie Reviews". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved December 23, 2012.
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