This article contains spoilers to the film "Beyond the Black Rainbow"
"Beyond the Black Rainbow" probably fits the definition of a “movie” [does it?]. At its best, it functions as a creeping field-trip through one of the most completely realized, stylistic visions ever filmed. Events that follow are near incomprehensible as the film relies more on surrealistic imagery and evocative score than “narrative” [much communication between characters is done through sharp nostril inhales and grunts] to lead the audience through its dream.
Taking placing in an underground psychiatric laboratory, it is somewhat jolting to see a brief shot of Ronald Reagan delivering a speech on an old television. What is Reagan doing down here?, you wonder for maybe a few seconds before the next visual set piece takes your attention. Critics (such as in this Tribeca Film article by Emily Ackerman) have labeled the movie as: a “Reagan-era fever dream”. This is consciously pursued by director Panos Cosmatos in relation between the two main characters: Barry the doctor, who has a special secret that he’s actually an elf, and Elena, the young girl with superpowers he’s imprisoned. Barry’s motives are unclear, and actions often unpredictable, leading to a tension over what he will do next.
This intentional atmosphere of dread and not knowing what else in the facility might be waiting for Elena when she escapes her room (as well as an ending that plays as ambiguously downbeat) feeds into the movie’s underlying message that those in positions of control can, quantitatively and completely, stifle the power of those under them by sinister manipulation. That attempting to experiment with drugs on subjects for seemingly arbitrary reasons (and then having the scope of their operation run out of control and turn against them) evokes pre-Reagan pictures of the CIA project MK Ultra. Contributing to the rising paranoia and distrust of overarching systems (among other things like Vietnam and etc.) was a covert project to experiment with psychedelic drugs on unsuspecting American citizens in often dangerous ways. Elena’s mind is manipulated by Barry’s tests, and her frustration at the lack of transparency in an underground environment, with seemingly no way out is palpable to an audience subconsciously relating to this mindset, through visual cues like the Reagan speech, reminding of the Iran-Contra Scandal — that speaking to an audience through a television screen is its own illusion alongside an immediate one around you. A further distortion of reality paralleling the confusion Elena feels towards her labyrinthine confines.
The movie’s takeaway is that oversight is a necessary device, one which would have prevented Barry from going nuts with all the drugs and the power — instead his supervisor sits permanently before a television screen, completely unaware of Barry’s “activities”. As long as the facility is still running he probably doesn’t care all that much. Why did the director decide to set the film in the 1980’s, but release only six years ago — because it reflects a continued suspicion by a public still not over past abuses, and in cases this is rightfully so as implications of the movie’s ideas point to recent events like the discovery of the NSA’s PRISM program. "Beyond the Black Rainbow" would urge its audience to take caution whenever there are those who can in clear perspective, look from the external down into a controlled and structured environment, ready to act under an invisible premise to “guide” those there towards a “goal”. Elena’s power is the same as a citizen’s — only when she can get beyond the facility’s opaque maze can she control her environment, but to what end the movie remains unclear.
