Altered States

Altered States was released in 1980 and directed by Ken Russell. Rather than simply retelling the plot, the film is worth revisiting for the characters, conflicts and ideas that give its story its identity.

Courage and Humanity emerge through what the characters face and the choices they make, giving the story more to explore beyond its immediate plot.

Eddie Jessup, Primal Man, into whom Eddie regresses and Emily Jessup do not begin the film seeing one another clearly, and watching those first impressions break down is a big part of why Altered States still works.

In 1967, Edward Jessup is a Columbia University psychopathologist studying schizophrenia.

He thinks that "our other states of consciousness are as real as our waking states." He begins experimenting with sensory deprivation using a flotation tank, aided by like-minded researchers, Arthur Rosenberg and Mason Parrish. That detail matters because it shapes the way the characters initially see one another.

At a faculty party, he meets fellow "whiz kid" and his future wife, Emily. From there, the film can concentrate less on explaining the setup and more on what happens between the people inside it.

Over a decade later, Edward is a tenured professor at Harvard Medical School.

He and Emily have two daughters and are on the brink of divorce when they reunite for the first time in seven years with the couple who had first introduced them.

When Edward hears about the Hinchi tribe, whose members experience shared hallucinatory states, he decides to travel to Mexico in order to participate in their ceremony.

During the climb up into the Hinchi hill country (a plateau covered in spectacular mushroom-shaped ventifacts), Edward is told by his guide, Eduardo Echeverria, that the Hinchi use in their ceremonies a potion containing the sacred mushroom Amanita muscaria and the shrub sinicuiche, which they are collecting for next year's ceremonies.

The tribe calls sinicuiche by a Hinchi name meaning "first/primordial flower" in recognition of the deep memory states which it can evoke.

Altered States has more on its mind than the basic setup suggests. courage sits close to the centre of the film, but it is explored through the characters rather than treated like a lesson.

humanity matters just as much. The film keeps challenging the assumptions its characters make about one another, which is where much of its emotional weight comes from.

Altered States could hardly be separated from the decade that produced it. Released in 1980, it carries the attitudes, style and filmmaking rhythms of the 1980s without needing to announce them.

It also sits comfortably within the era's horror, science fiction, thriller, drama, fantasy and science fiction horror filmmaking, even if the movie itself is more interesting than any single genre label suggests.

That is part of why it still appears in conversations about Altered States 1980 and 1980s movies. The film has become tied not only to its own story but to the wider memory of what 1980s movies felt like.

Watching Altered States now means seeing both what has lasted and what unmistakably belongs to 1980.

What still works best is the human material. Ideas around courage and humanity have not stopped being relevant simply because the clothes, language and cultural references belong to another era.

Some moments inevitably land differently for a modern audience. Revisiting an older film properly means enjoying what still works without pretending every choice has aged equally well.

A large part of that staying power comes from the characters. Eddie Jessup, Primal Man, into whom Eddie regresses and Emily Jessup are still useful shorthand for the personalities and pressures the film explores.

Altered States has lasted because people continue to recognise something in it. Nostalgia helps, but nostalgia alone does not keep a movie in the conversation for decades.