Beyond the Black Rainbow

November 18, 2010 12:35 PM

"Set in the strange and oppressive emotional landscape of the year 1983, Beyond The Black Rainbow is a Reagan era fever dream inspired by hazy childhood memories of midnight movies and Saturday morning cartoons." Trailer.

The North American premiere will take place at the Whistler Film Fest in December.

posted by naju (29 comments total)

That trailer is like the filmic equivalent of chillwave — hazy, wonderfully weird, nostalgic, pastiche-driven, dreary, fucked up/with and seemingly interesting... but yet, you can tell they're hedging their bets with inscrutability and synths.

But yeah I wanna watch it.
posted by defenestration at 12:43 PM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Easy, eyewise. But I think a bit less atmosphere and a bit more story clue would help it along. It needed a little help.
posted by uraniumwilly at 12:43 PM on November 18, 2010

Liquid Sky 2 - Electronica Boogaloo!
posted by Slap*Happy at 12:46 PM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

At first I thought that trailer was just a new Trent Reznor video.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 12:48 PM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

uraniumwilly: I think a bit less atmosphere and a bit more story clue would help it along
I thought the exact opposite. I like that at this stage I have no clue what it's about and yet I am totally intrigued and anxious to see it. Atmosphere and cool visuals might be all it has going for it. If the whole movie looks and feels this cool a good story would just be a plus.

That Jeremy Schmidt old school synth score puts the trailer over the top. I'm not sure that I would have been as hooked without it.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 12:52 PM on November 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

Anything that is described as a "Regan era fever dream" gives me the chills.
posted by hellojed at 12:56 PM on November 18, 2010

"Reagan era fever dream"

This movie gives me AIDS?
posted by PostIronyIsNotaMyth at 1:01 PM on November 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

I don't recall 1983 being particularly emotionally oppressive, but then again I was 7.
posted by electroboy at 1:04 PM on November 18, 2010

Panos Cosmatos' only other output so far seems to be this video for Handsome Furs' "Dumb Animals"

... at least according to the Chromewood Web site. But it is a legit video, or so says WPF (or WPA or whatever the label is called).

His or her Twitter page. No mention of Black Rainbow ... the actors seem legit tho ...
posted by mrgrimm at 1:14 PM on November 18, 2010

"Set in the giddy and heedless emotional landscape of the year 1922, Beyond The Rainbow is a Harding era fever dream inspired by hazy childhood memories of midnight parties and 78 RPM jazz recordings."
posted by Smart Dalek at 1:19 PM on November 18, 2010 [7 favorites]

Looks cool, but I don't get the 1983 thing? The only thing I recognized as being 80s in the trailer was the tape deck.
posted by forforf at 1:41 PM on November 18, 2010

If the year is 1983 why is it set in an Apple store?
posted by clarknova at 1:42 PM on November 18, 2010 [4 favorites]

Looks cool, but I don't get the 1983 thing? The only thing I recognized as being 80s in the trailer was the tape deck.

Really? The entire thing seemed very 80s sci-horror to me - splashes of Logan's Run, a hint of Life Force or something even. The sort of muted plasticity of some of the sets, even an echo of the tones of THX 1138 or something maybe. No clear-lined callouts or allusions, but very mood-echo-y.
posted by FatherDagon at 1:56 PM on November 18, 2010 [4 favorites]

JG Ballard presents: Tron
posted by Ian A.T. at 2:12 PM on November 18, 2010

Sounds like somebody wasn't happy with the last Coheed and Cambria record.
posted by koeselitz at 2:16 PM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

The synopsis makes it sound like a Firefly spinoff for River Tam.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:39 PM on November 18, 2010

Creepy Carl Sagan! Sinister and ominous! OooOoOoOOoooOoo!
posted by Appropriate Username at 2:57 PM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Beautiful looking trailer but it didn't give me the 80s feeling at all. I was expecting something more like Night of the Comet.

(Logan's Run and THX were both 70s films.)
posted by cazoo at 3:02 PM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

I found an Italian review of the film, and the mangled Google translation is too awesome not to share:

"Beyond the Black Rainbow, which competed in Ravenna in the presence of its young author, is a text object rather unsettling. Difficult to deny that it is exposed a great visual talent. It is equally difficult not to notice how this talent will face the awkwardness of swallowing a muddled and incoherent plot, summed up by this track laboriously inferred from the story: in a scientific laboratory where you practice unspecified neurological health care, a professor performs experiments on a girl with deadly powers, created by an extracorporeal trip made by the same teacher under the guidance of his mentor. Fantahorror classifiable as lysergic acid, the film is highly influenced by late '70s aesthetic, and full of smoke machines, colored constellations, bright geometric solids and robotic synthesizers. Given the very low cost, it is truly amazing the work done on the costumes, set design and locations, which bring to mind the aseptic clinical hurt Cronenberg's first space-age design and the ever-present in the same period. The director, as anything but amateurish, welcomes exhausting lengthy descriptive while the script curls topos gender (kills with his eyes, mutant brain travel, mind control devices) are often devoid of narrative context, which prepare too a final long run and chase that unexpectedly turns into a slasher rural setting and then choking in an inexplicable and disappointing anticlimax. Too cryptic to get a distribution, an aesthetic universe of borrowing too exhausted to be relevant as an object videoartist, more like, purely for the value of its atmospheric visual system, along with a video in slow motion, Beyond the Black Rainbow is a disproportionate difficult to place the subject of modernism. We wish in any way for its author to have a second chance to express themselves, perhaps in a more complete destination project. Sometimes even the creative constraints can be useful."
posted by naju at 3:53 PM on November 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

I don't recall 1983 being particularly emotionally oppressive, but then again I was 7.
posted by electroboy

Same with me (I was 8), but I've really been freaked out lately by reading about the US/USSR near-misses of 1982-83. Like, I can't believe I spent such a scary fucking time playing with GI Joes.
posted by COBRA! at 3:58 PM on November 18, 2010

I really should've put a spoiler warning on that review, sorry.
posted by naju at 4:08 PM on November 18, 2010

Please, film-makers, LISTEN TO THIS PLEA!!!

Talk about egregious overuse of the teal/orange thing. I really wanted to try to appreciate it, but it was just too pathetically blatant with the tinting.
posted by symbioid at 4:10 PM on November 18, 2010

This looks beautiful and atmospheric, but I don't have high hopes. Still I mean to see it.

(I am looking forward to Beyond the Hurfdurf Rainbow, made in 2037 and set in 2003, inspired by "hazy childhood memories of Homestar Runner.com and Youtube Poops.")
posted by Countess Elena at 4:41 PM on November 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

I remember 1983 being severely emotionally oppressive. (I was 8 going on 9.) Then again, it was the year my father died, and I think also the year I first understood about nuclear weapons. :(

(The trailer/synopsis sounds like a River Tam Firefly spinoff to me, too.)
posted by epersonae at 4:42 PM on November 18, 2010

When I was 7 I was living Bozeman, MT; the kind of place where people wish they lived when the bombs start dropping. Soooo, I could listen to Casey Kasem in relative peace.

"Do you really want to hurt meeeeee...."
posted by Brocktoon at 4:56 PM on November 18, 2010

(Logan's Run and THX were both 70s films.)

Aw hells, for some reason I totally had '1981' in my head for both of those, but THX was pre-Star Wars, even. Duhhrr... still, the mood strikes me as similar.
posted by FatherDagon at 5:44 PM on November 18, 2010

In 1983, I was 13. And I can't speak to this film, but this part of the article in the 3rd link? Yes.

Individuals tuned to the social turmoil of the Reagan 80′s and the collective hangup on defeating communism with nuclear weapons in the night made 1983 to 1986 a really weird time to be a kid. Particularly, a kid growing up on shadowy dystopian science fiction and late shows proudly displaying poor production values in movies desperately trying to siphon some of that Mad Max cash that was so abundant in a society desperately trying to come to terms with the significant possibility that we all might die at the same time. Burned to a crisp instantly if we suffered the misfortune of living in and around a major population center, a Strategic Air Command base or a missile silo.

I have my doubts the film will live up to that. I'm not sure precisely WHAT could live up to how weird things felt then.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:20 AM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

When I was 7 I was living Bozeman, MT; the kind of place where people wish they lived when the bombs start dropping. Soooo, I could listen to Casey Kasem in relative peace.

"Do you really want to hurt meeeeee...."

I just met a girl and guy that live in Bozeman. Based on they way they described it, I really want to visit. It seems like a chill place.
posted by defenestration at 12:56 PM on November 19, 2010

I will be keeping an eye out for this one.
In '83, I was 9. I remember there being an extremely unsettling atmosphere around this time. Then again, I could be confusing it with 1984 when, for some reason known only to her, my school teacher sat the class down and made us watch THREADS.
posted by Artaud at 12:39 AM on November 22, 2010