Forced Hollywood Ending?
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MedullaPancreasOblongata — 22 years ago(March 15, 2004 12:18 PM)
if you notice the end sequence in A-ha's "Take On Me" music-video you will see a homage to the end sequence in Altered States, a la Eddie throwing himself against the walls, transforming between two selves.
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imdK — 22 years ago(March 26, 2004 06:04 AM)
wow, ok
i just saw this movie, rated it 10/10, and hopefuly you will believe me, i had the exact same thought you did when i saw him banging at the walls. i always thought of that video to be, if not the best music video i've ever seen, at least one of them. i can't put in words how great i felt when i read that someone else felt as i did.
this events made my day.
Though () you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours () I simply am not there.
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stalingradiii — 12 years ago(September 11, 2013 10:26 PM)
Just saw today for the first time
- I also think abrupts movie finals are next to a mad director/editing director whom had the studio executives standing just behind them saying "No, No and No" of course, you may think this, when you see a movie so complex like this one. I support this because, i was worried about who was babysitting the children at the end of the movie, but Emily (directors masterpice) said: I better call the children, priceless.
- Also i agreed about the A-HA "Take on me" video scene, and was really amusing as i started to humming the song lyrics at that time, at least i got some laughs.
Tuttle should have had L31.06, debited against his account, not Buttle!
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mcerion — 21 years ago(April 15, 2004 10:58 AM)
This film went through two film studios, two directors, two production designers and two special effects units. The writer disowned it. This is why the ending seems out of place. It was well known at the time, 24 years ago.
I agree, the ending seems tacked on. It should have ended with the total physical regression or transcendence of William Hurt's character. Even though it has the usual 'love conquers all' ending, I still love this film. -
burthelukyman — 11 years ago(March 09, 2015 01:28 PM)
"I agree, the ending seems tacked on. It should have ended with the total physical regression or transcendence of William Hurt's character." Interestingly, the famous SIXTH FINGER episode of the classic TV show THE OUTER LIMITS faced the same dilemma back in 1963 : The David McCallum character at the end was supposed to revert back in time to an amoeba-type cell ("he's gone back to the very origin of life") but the script was changed to please the ABC executives and he was brought back in present-day time by his loving girlfriend !
http://wearecontrollingtransmission.blogspot.ca/2011/01/sixth-finger.html -
Stefkin — 21 years ago(June 27, 2004 06:55 AM)
Note the words Eddie utters before he goes into the deformative state at the end. He says that he has experienced the great emptiness and terror of coming into existence, and that it is not that state, but the living reality that holds the truth. The other states eventually are nothing, literally.
It is also this understanding that makes him express his love for his wife. He was always to preoccupied with finding truth and understanding in the universe to give himself to love, but now that he knows that truth and understanding in fact only lead to the emptiness he experienced, he can finally just feel, just be part of the moment and give into it.
When he experiences the sort of "fallback" of becoming shapeless again, and even affecting his wife by transponding energy into her, it is his new realisation that helps him return to the reality he wishes to be a part of.
He does not transcend because there is nothing to transcend to. All is emptiness. Very buddhist and one of the reasons I loved this unexpected ending. -
chasehamrick — 19 years ago(June 29, 2006 08:52 AM)
Yes the ending is great because that really sounds like something you would learn in an altered state like that. If you were hallucinating and doing that crazy metaphysical beep i think you would realize the truth is you don't really want to exist in the nothingness, before the universe was created thats not what were meant for, you would want to exist with people and feel love.
not sure if i actually believe in trips causing thing to happen physically like in the movie but i could really see figuring something out like that during a trip -
briansouter — 15 years ago(May 16, 2010 06:56 AM)
a bit late to respond now,but theres no buddhist 'emptiness' in this filmSunyata is not some sort of nothingness.
Sunyata is a Mahayana development of 'Dependent Origination'that is no thing exists independently'Phenomena are śnya or unreal because no phenomenon when taken by itself is thinkable: they are all interdependent and have no separate existence of their own.'
This talk of 'energy' is also misleadingThats a western mechanistic interpretation.
'He who takes things out of the Earth invites disaster'..Hopi saying -
gsygsy — 13 years ago(July 28, 2012 09:02 AM)
Just seen the movie and thought the ending was inevitable - didn't seem tacked on at all. As Stefkin says in his comment, 'He (Eddie) does not transcend because there is nothing to transcend to'. There is no external meaning, no meaning out there for us to find. We choose meaning, or we choose death. It's anti-mystical, anti-religious. Existentialism rather than Buddhism. The last line seems to me to be what the whole film (and I suppose the source novel too) was working towards.
Pretty good, really. Much better than I was expecting. -
gnolti — 19 years ago(August 05, 2006 04:59 AM)
Nobody can top Crealist's summary, but I'd add one point: The story is a satisfying fulfillment of the philosophy (or thesis, or credo, or what have you) that Chayefsky put forward in Network (1976), which is that the individual in modern society is too self-absorbed and self-interested to be capable of love. (In Network he pitted William Holden against Faye Dunaway and the way corporate media made a mockery of human experience. Holden lost.) I don't know how Chayefsky's original novel of Altered States ended, but it makes sense that he would try to show that humans are still capable of reaching out to each other from within the womb/tomb of the self.
"Follow those who seek the truth. Beware of those who find it." -
Patrick-27 — 19 years ago(August 08, 2006 11:33 AM)
Actually, the novel (which I just finished reading for the 2nd time
since I first read it in 1986) ended the same way as the movie, except that
they didn't disappear and re-appear as they did in the movie.
The novel of course was also PACKED with theoretical speculations of
what was happening to Jessup. I found it both fascinating and hard
to understand.
In that last scene where Jessup is explaining to Emily what happened, he
tells her that at one point all of his matter was returning to pure engergy,
pure nothingness. And it doesn't stop there. It never stops. From nothingness,
it goes on to something more horrible! Whatever that means. That has had me
stumped ever since I first read the book, but it sounds alot like Emily did
more that just save Jessup's life, or save him from spending the rest of
it looking like an extra from 1,000,000 B.C.. She did nothing less than
save him from what might be called Hell. And she did so at the risk of
joining him there. I just wish that I could more clearly understand the
exact nature of what she saved him from. Basically, the book seemed more
like a metaphore for human kind's search for the meaning of life than it
did a science fiction.
I was not overly impressed with the DVD. It did have a number of trailers,
and scene access. It also had a page about the scientific theory that went
into the movie. When I first saw that page, my eyes bugged out because I
didn't look very carefully and I thought that each sentence was a link to
a different documentary about the science of altered states, but instead,
the text simply posed the question of wheter or not it was possible to
retrieve such ancient memories? Some scientists think that the answer
might lie it the unexplored two thirds of the human brain. That's the
best of it that I can remember.
Now, if you want to rent a movie with a fascinating "Science Of" documentary,
check out the DVD for "Suspect Zero" and see what it has to say about remote
viewing.
In any case, I really did like altered states (which I saw in the theatre)or I
wouldn't have rented the DVD, or book from the library. But what I wouldn't
give to talk to the late Paddy Chayefsky, or some of the scientists that
he spoke to, whose names are mentioned in the acknowledgements
By the way Gnolti, I noticed that quote at the end of your post.
"Follow those who seek the truth. Beware of those who find it."
When I first heard it, I heard it phrased as "May god deliver us
to those who seek the truth, and deliver us from those who've found
it". I've been looking for the author of that quote for years. Do you
know who it is?
-Patrick- -
gnolti — 19 years ago(August 09, 2006 04:22 AM)
Ironic you should notice, Patrick, since I only just changed my tag yesterday, as I do periodically. But I got the quote from Truffaut's Le Peau Douce, where it was attributed to Andre Gide.
"I never had a latency period." -
tbyrd8 — 19 years ago(August 24, 2006 04:13 PM)
I never could figure out why Chayevsky disowned the film. Not only was the ending virtually the same, huge chunks of dialogue came straight from the book to the screen, though often with the characters (very naturally, in my opinion) saying their lines at the same time, interrupting each other. I liked this movie from the first viewing in the theater, and along the way got a VHS and now a DVD of it. But then I like almost all of "crazy" Ken Russell's films.