Vision and Ecstasy: Crossing the Threshold

"You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do, is to bring back a new idea, because our world is in danger by the absence of good ideas"-   Terence McKenna

"...For it is in the Visionary modality that myth functions as the telescope for viewing into the deepest reaches of the human soul, ironically transforming the movie camera from a mere optical device for recording consensus reality to a pulsing organic machine capable of peering with its intrusive Eye into our dreaming skulls."- John David Ebert

Stanley Kubrick single handedly made science fiction films real. Spaceships no longer spun like giant silver frisbees on fishing line in front of pinpricked black curtains, aliens didn't need funny rubber ears and green face makeup to look otherworldly, and robots were no longer men with empty TV boxes over their chests wrapped tin foil with silver air-duct hoses over their arms. The outward aesthetic of sci-fi was changed forever, virtually overnight. However, 2001: A Space Odyssey still has all the trappings and tropes of Grandpa's sci-fi (spaceships, killer robots, weird aliens), albeit radically reconfigured as never before.

Amidst all the meticulously detailed floating gadgets of Kubrick's future world (which have since become common place in sci-fi movies), there is one scene at the end of the film with such ecstatic and visionary force that we are taken over the edge: the so-called "Stagate Sequence." There are a million things that make 2001 stand out from any other sci-fi film, yet it is this scene that throws us completely into the realm of the visionary. Suddenly, the visual threshold of what we normally expect from sci-fi is not only crossed, it is transgressed. In one explosive, psychedelic sequence of abstract animation, something that had never been seen before was there on the silver screen. Mainstream audiences in 1968 were met with something truly otherworldly. The means by which this sequence was accomplished is still somewhat a mystery, at least to me; the technical description of the "slit scan process" that made this scene a visual reality is so nonsensically complicated that I've yet to read or hear anything that comes close to an understandable explanation (something involving multiple passes with the animation camera of various backlit abstract images on an inverted plane, yada yada yada.)

Released nine years before Star Wars and made decades before the Computer Generated Imagery epidemic, the "Stargate Sequence" is still a mindblowing visual creation even in this world where blockbuster Hollywood filmmakers consistently throw new wonders at us seemingly every second. Cinema and the ecstatic are closely linked; movies are the easiest and safest (and perhaps most potent) way many of us will ever come to an ecstatic religious experience. Here are some sequences that best represent that exhilarating moment when we cross the threshold of one world and enter another.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) "The Stargate Sequence"

The whole film is, of course, still a wonder in so many indescribable ways, but the sequence where astronaut David Bowman goes "Beyond the Infinite" is a revolutionary visual statement all its own. It also completely destroys the effectiveness of Arthur C. Clarke's companion novel. Besides ruining all the mystery and poetry of Kubrick's film by literally spelling everything out, there's nothing described in 2001: The Book that comes close to the sublimity this scene. Plus, the book doesn't have Ligeti's truly awesome (and downright nightmarish) music blaring through the pages. Designed and supervised by Kubrick himself and visual effects guru Douglass Trumbull, the sequence took months to create with the most primitive of techniques. Because Kubrick received on screen credit as "Director of Photographic Effects", Kubrick received an Oscar for "Best Achievement in Visual Effects" at the 1968 Academy Awards. It would be his only Oscar win. Here's the entire sequence of Bowman entering The Stargate and his mindblowing journey across time, space, and the human imagination:

Tron (1982) "Entering the Computer World Sequence"

People today have the misconception that all the visual effects in 1982's Tron were created with computers. The truth is, only a few elements were actually entirely created in the computer, and those that were completely digital (such as the fantastic vehicles and some shots of the electronic topography) had to transferred onto film by traditional means like optical printing, rotoscoping, etc. Indeed, Tron has been immortalized for the ages by geekdom, but there is a revolutionary aspect to its visual aesthetic that has yet to be fully addressed, let alone appreciated: the visual effects totally call attention to themselves on purpose. In other words, Tron's fantasy realm is supposed to look abstract, linear, and rudimentary just like the primitive means that were used to create it. This is important because a large portion of the charm of the original Tron hinges on this point. It's also the reason why the new Tron movie is such a failure. So, in a world where computer effects technicians are given zillions of dollars to make giant toys look like they're really crushing the hell out of each other or make dinosaurs tap dance has well as Gregory Hines, Tron is a breathtaking and rather profound experiment in aesthetics that goes beyond its technical achievements and enhances the rip-roaring Lucasian derring-do that we geeks love so much. No sequence in Tron better illustrates this than when Flynn (Jeff Bridges) gets blasted by the OCP into billions of pixels and gets sucked "into the rabbit hole." Here it is:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) "Spock Mind Melds with V'ger Sequence"

Even for a true blue Trek fanatic like me, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (or Star Trek: The Motionless Picture) is a real chore to sit through. Though the film has production values that even George Lucas or Ridley Scott would be proud of, it's staggeringly ponderous with no payoff at the end to equal its pretensions. But just when we've given up, our brains on total exposition overload, suddenly there comes a sequence in the middle of the film that's visionary with a true sense of wonder. It's as if this sequence belongs to another film altogether. Spock bravely zooms straight into the heart of the gigantic god-like alien being named V'ger. Along the way, Spock witnesses all sorts of wonders collected throughout V'ger's travels that would leave Bowman breathless. After a while, Spock decides to do what any mild-mannered Vulcan would do: he mind melds with the galactic entity and doesn't even buy it dinner first! What a dick! Anyways, the sequence was created by Douglass Trumbull (who also gave us the Stargate Sequence as well as the effects in Close Encounters), so the producers really splurged on Star Trek for the first time ever. Too bad the story and script weren't cooler, though. Here's the scene I'm talking about:

FantasticPlanet (1972) "Draag Meditation Sequence"

Not exactly a "crossing over sequence" necessarily, but I think it fits in nicely with our theme. We know we're already in a completely alien world from the first couple of seconds of watching the unforgettable Fantastic Planet. But there is a particular scene early on in the film when an enslaved human toddler stumbles upon his alien captors performing an exotic mind expanding ritual that's as hallucinatory as anything I've ever seen in a sci-fi film. The gargantuan alien overlords ("The Draags") trip their balls off and morph into Arp-like biomorphic blobs, then late-period Picasso paintings until they realize they're being spied on by a human. It's all rather embarrassing for both the Draags and the young human, like when you're a kid and you accidentally walk in on your parents having sex. Luckily, this traumatic event eventually leads our human hero to start a revolution. Just like in real life! Check it out:

Altered States (1980) "Sensory-Deprivation Tank Hallucinations" 

Ken Russell's Altered States has a lot more in common with Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind than you might at first think. Both are about white males obsessed with attaining profoundly personal visionary experiences in a cynical, post-Watergate America. But where Roy Neary is a blue-collar every man whose life is changed forever after witnessing something otherworldly, Dr. Jessup in Altered States is a snotty academian with a mad scientist streak whose psychological experiments in his SD tank are increasingly changing him (literally) into something innerworldly. While in the tank, Jessup's initial hallucinations are a delirious, even hilarious, amalgam of Judeo-Christian iconography through the lens of Russell's trademark gaudy and perverse pop surrealism with Bran Ferren's visual effects. I can't really write about it adequately, so just take a look (WARNING: Adult Content):

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Special Edition) (1980)
"Inside the Mothership Sequence"

Spielberg regrets that he created this additional sequence where he shows us the inside of the floating metropolis at the end of Close Encounters in the 1980 "Special Edition" rerelease of his 1977 masterpiece. I don't know why. I mean, it just gives us more to be in awe of and daydream about with it's blazing shafts of light, giant glittering spires, and awesomely enormous "Krell-like" technology. The scene isn't even that long, containing only a few dozen or so shots. But WOW! Not only does it add to the sense of wonder of the original release, it further enhances the religiosity of Roy Neary's Campbellian quest. Designed and storyboarded by the great R. Cobb, the interior looks like the colossal, mindbogglingly mega-huge super technology found in a Jack Kirby drawing, but on DMT. This gorgeous scene is now relegated to the "Deleted Scenes" on many DVD editions, though The Special Edition is available in the "Super Special Anniversary Deluxe Edition" DVD released a few years ago. I grew up on The Special Edition, so for me this is the real Close Encounters as it was the version shown on HBO and available on videocassette for years until the DVD revolution. Interestingly, in a sense, Close Encounters is the antithesis of 2001 even though Spielberg's timeless fantasy is undoubtedly indebted to it. Instead of giving us what we want (or more of what we think we want) as Spielberg does so ingeniously and generously in The Special Edition, Kubrick gives us what we don't expect, and thus transcends disappointment creating something truly alien and unsettling. Here's the mothership sequence from the Close Encounters Special Edition (forgive the less than stellar quality. It's the only version of the scene available on the web that I could find):

Please let me know if there are any other scenes in the vein of the films mentioned above that I've neglected I'll add them accordingly. Thank you for reading! Keep dreaming...

Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (1824) Casper David Friedrich

Lawrence Pearce Artwerks

"The work of art is a stuffed crocodile."- Alfred Jarry