I was pleasantly surprised by it too. For a change, it was nice to see a commercial film that made its effects work for the story rather than the other way around.
Only the end wasn't quite satisfying to me... (spoilers below)
It sounded as though the protagonist had reverse engineered the drug; but if that's the case, what does he plan to do with it? Will he give it some kind of a controlled release, or attempt to sit on it for the rest of his life? And if the latter, how should we feel about another straight, white, wealthy male setting himself up as ruler of the world? I can appreciate the open-endedness of it, but I found it irksome at the same time.
Ah! I had a totally different interpretation of what he said! :)
When he started his research program, he had only about a six month supply. With other people dipping into it, I suspect he had less. At the end of the film, it was 12 months later. He said he was _off_ completely. So. Here's my interpretation.
I've used psychedelics and in doing so, I've had the similar feeling of being limitless. The entire film really closely matches with my experience of taking LSD. While on it, I've studied, practiced art and music and most importantly meditated.
I believe he was saying that he'd reverse-engineered the effect in his own brain. This is how I've been using psychedelics. Each time I go in, I try to bring back a bit more of the experience, making my life more and more like that perfect state version of myself. The brain is a plastic object and you train new paths in it. Last year, I learned that the way I'd been learning things was really all wrong in approach. Don't get me wrong, it worked, but I was using too much effort. It's the difference between beating someone up with brute force and using martial art and observation to stop an opponent with a bare minimum of force. The difference in process is very difficult to describe in any way other than metaphor and it's difficult internal work but it IS working.
So my interpretation was that he was using his experience to examine his experience and figure out how to make himself be in that space all the time without the drug. Diet, exercise, meditation, you can use a combination of those things to reach it. Ram Dass talks about this in the book 'Be Here Now'. Scientifically, I think it's quite plausible. In cases of severe depression, it's been shown that people's minds are chemically altered to the point that depression is self-feeding. The best way to stop being depressed is actually to not be depressed but it takes a long while with the good patterns in your brain to replace the bad ones. That's why anti-depressants should only be a piece of a person's road to mental wellness.
It was also mentioned in the film that the drug works better for smart people and this fits with my experience of LSD. If one already has critical thought patterns established then it's easier to take the new input and run with it. Less stuff you have to learn to improve your abilities.
As for his grand plan? I really like that it was left up to the imagination of the audience. For my money, I'll again make two observations. Of the people I'm aware of who have taken psychedelics or reached for other forms of enlightenment, their greatest interest becomes a humanitarian one. Working with everyone else to make a greater world. For me, this is almost certainly the ideal of the protagonist. In the first part of the movie he gives the bar-room version of his science fiction story and it sounds like it's set in a post-scarcity future. So, he was probably already well on the road.
The most negative thing for me in the film was his womanizing. Not really the behavior of an enlightened being. But I will imagine that he evolved beyond this. He did say that he learned to manage the negative effects of the drug by cutting out alcohol, smoking, and some other things. So perhaps he went through a spiritual and self cleansing as well.
Anyhow, I thought it was a neat film. Definitely didn't fit many of the standard formulas and was more thought provoking than many films I've seen.
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Only the end wasn't quite satisfying to me... (spoilers below)
It sounded as though the protagonist had reverse engineered the drug; but if that's the case, what does he plan to do with it? Will he give it some kind of a controlled release, or attempt to sit on it for the rest of his life? And if the latter, how should we feel about another straight, white, wealthy male setting himself up as ruler of the world? I can appreciate the open-endedness of it, but I found it irksome at the same time.
no subject
When he started his research program, he had only about a six month supply. With other people dipping into it, I suspect he had less. At the end of the film, it was 12 months later. He said he was _off_ completely. So. Here's my interpretation.
I've used psychedelics and in doing so, I've had the similar feeling of being limitless. The entire film really closely matches with my experience of taking LSD. While on it, I've studied, practiced art and music and most importantly meditated.
I believe he was saying that he'd reverse-engineered the effect in his own brain. This is how I've been using psychedelics. Each time I go in, I try to bring back a bit more of the experience, making my life more and more like that perfect state version of myself. The brain is a plastic object and you train new paths in it. Last year, I learned that the way I'd been learning things was really all wrong in approach. Don't get me wrong, it worked, but I was using too much effort. It's the difference between beating someone up with brute force and using martial art and observation to stop an opponent with a bare minimum of force. The difference in process is very difficult to describe in any way other than metaphor and it's difficult internal work but it IS working.
So my interpretation was that he was using his experience to examine his experience and figure out how to make himself be in that space all the time without the drug. Diet, exercise, meditation, you can use a combination of those things to reach it. Ram Dass talks about this in the book 'Be Here Now'. Scientifically, I think it's quite plausible. In cases of severe depression, it's been shown that people's minds are chemically altered to the point that depression is self-feeding. The best way to stop being depressed is actually to not be depressed but it takes a long while with the good patterns in your brain to replace the bad ones. That's why anti-depressants should only be a piece of a person's road to mental wellness.
It was also mentioned in the film that the drug works better for smart people and this fits with my experience of LSD. If one already has critical thought patterns established then it's easier to take the new input and run with it. Less stuff you have to learn to improve your abilities.
As for his grand plan? I really like that it was left up to the imagination of the audience. For my money, I'll again make two observations. Of the people I'm aware of who have taken psychedelics or reached for other forms of enlightenment, their greatest interest becomes a humanitarian one. Working with everyone else to make a greater world. For me, this is almost certainly the ideal of the protagonist. In the first part of the movie he gives the bar-room version of his science fiction story and it sounds like it's set in a post-scarcity future. So, he was probably already well on the road.
The most negative thing for me in the film was his womanizing. Not really the behavior of an enlightened being. But I will imagine that he evolved beyond this. He did say that he learned to manage the negative effects of the drug by cutting out alcohol, smoking, and some other things. So perhaps he went through a spiritual and self cleansing as well.
Anyhow, I thought it was a neat film. Definitely didn't fit many of the standard formulas and was more thought provoking than many films I've seen.