Funny how I came to this film at exactly the time I needed to...
“I… want you to know what a magnificent, overwhelming
picture it is. You achieve moods that I’ve never experienced in the movies
before…”
Terrence Malick
It’s hard to understand how this film never had a full UK
release, especially given that scriptwriter and director Mike Hodges was fresh
from his two Michael Caine films, the smash hit Get Carter and more mixed
Pulp (1972), was adapting a 1972 novel by no less than Michael Crichton.
But the project was troubled from the start with Crichton originally down to
direct from his own script which Warner Brothers felt had departed too much
from his book. Out of this development hell came the appointment of Hodges who
not for the last time – see Black Rainbow (1989) – had a bad experience with
studios.
I admit, I started the film twice as it is a slow starter,
spending some half an hour on our introduction to George Segal’s character Harry
Benson, and the medical teams assessment and subsequent operation, but give it
time and your focus and you will be rewarded – it would be very interesting to
watch on the big screen for this reason.
Segal is superb as the computer scientist who is the victim of
violent seizures and who is concerned about the potential dangers of advanced
computers to humanity. As a subscription to Science Fiction Monthly in my teens
and a voracious reader of comics and the works of Harlan Ellison, Philip K
Dick, Larry Niven and Frank Herbert, the concerns about artificial intelligence
go back along time, even to the fifties and Asimov, Clarke and other scientists
writing fiction.
Segal plays his character as mild-mannered – in deliberate counter-point to what he might become during an episode of what the doctors diagnose as Acute Disinhibitory Lesion syndrome. This is an actual condition in which the brain's regulatory system fails to filter thoughts, impulses, and social responses before externalising them: something modern day social media is very adept at encouraging. The team, led by surgeon Dr John Ellis (Richard A. Dysart), Dr. Arthur McPherson (Donald Moffat) and the unsettling Dr. Robert Morris (Michael C. Gwynne) agree that an experimental procedure involving the insertion of an electrical device in his brain is the only way to control his condition. Only the empathetic psychiatrist Dr. Janet Ross (Joan Hackett) disagrees.
Throughout this part of the film there’s an antiseptic silence
to a lot of the scenes, with only the actor’s expressions and their calm voices
to add flavour. It feels like the calm rationality before ethe storm and the
laughing and joking of hospital workers outside of the surgery acts as a stark
reminder of the warmth humanity can usually generate. This is very much Hodges’
aim and, confessing in an interview amongst the Arrow Blu-ray extras, that he
was depressed during this period it adds extra poignancy to Harry’s plight. The
idea that a man almost phobic about the computer science he understands so well
could be saved by placing a small part of it inside his thinking and feeling machine
is clearly meant as repulsive.
Harry is alienated from him self and the most feral aspect of
his personality – regulating his amygdala responses is tantamount to electronic
lobotomy and we all know it. The cinematography and mise-en-scene reflect this
with Hodges being very influenced by the modern artist Edward Hopper who
painted the urban loneliness of contemporary America and he later told Marl Adams,
“I can remember snipping my film down to match the loneliness that Hopper had
captured."
“Your images make me understand what an image is, not a
pretty picture but something that should pierce one through like an arrow and
speak in a language all its own."
Terrence Malick
The operation seems to have been a success but by this point
we have decided not to trust most of those involved in this experiment with the
exception of Dr Janet. Joan Hackett is someone I remember from Alias Smith and
Jones and a tonne of US TV series and films from this era. She, like Segal had
great comic chops and like George she also has depth as a straight actor with her
sparkling eyes alive with meaning and a humanity lacking in most of her
colleagues who are more than happy to use Harry for this long-shot.
Of course the process starts to go wrong as the seizure and electrical
response loop speeds up and the brain starts to become addicted to the
feedback, pushing Harry closer and closer to ever more violent episodes. He escapes
from the hospital and as the line between his Jekyll and Hyde starts to blur,
seeks out his old girlfriend Angela Black (Jill Clayburgh) brutally killing her
after just one night.
He is out of control and on the rampage across Los Angeles, arriving at Dr Ross’ apartment being both reasonable and threatening she only just manages to avoid the same fate as Angela. The film is as frenetic as the opening is calm and the overall impact is all the more shocking because of it as, like AI developing in an unregulated way, Harry the Experiment makes up his own rules and outthinks his pursuers.
Dusty Verdict: This is, as Mr Malick suggests, a film that
does make you feel on a different level and it is quite disturbing as a whole.
We are truly taken inside Harry’s world by Hodges’ direction and the chemistry
between Segal and Hackett provides the emotional stakes at the heart of this
bleak and lonely Los Angeles. Could this happen today? It probably already is
in so many ways as the powers that be push for billionaire solutions that rely
on machines more than man and on the obfuscation of objective reality leaving
us to rely on human instinct in a world they decide is frightening and
horrifically out of control.
There’s no way of inserting a machine to regulate global Disinhibitory
Lesions…
The Arrow release has both the theatrical release – which did
well in Japan, natch, as well as the Director’s Cut from Hodges which leaves
the audience with more thinking to do. In the end there’s not so much
difference between Harry and Carter, or a number of Hodges male protagonists.
This is an important part of his most personal films and deserves to be seen as
part of his strand that stretches back to the TV films Suspect (1969)
and Rumour (1970) about men on missions of discovery…
