Like Aaron Sorkin, Paddy Chayefsky is one of the greats though he occasionally has the tendency to overwrite. Meanwhile, director Ken Russell does not know how to direct with subtly, often shredding the screenplays he works with into barely comprehensible narratives. If you boil this film all the way down, it’s about a scientist (William Hurt) looking to expand his consciousness through dangerous experiments involving drugs and a sensory-deprivation tank. While his mind expands, his body may be physically regressing back to a more primordial form.
It’s an exploration of both the origin and evolution of the species, becoming one with the universe by becoming nothing. That sounds like a bunch of hooey, the kind I usually checks out of or laugh at. Yet, I like this film a lot and it’s mostly because of the tension created by Chayefsky’s lengthy dialogue sections where he actually grounds events in philosophy and science only for the film to swing back to another Ken Russell montage of surreal and often unnerving imagery. The effects in those scenes don’t compare to what can be done now, but they’re still full or awe and terror. The two ends are held together by a hokey but necessary glue about the power of love.
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