Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010) on Netflix
In 1983, Elena is a mute young woman held at the Arboria Institute, a research facility run by Dr. Barry Nyle. Her telepathy is kept in check by a glowing device.
- Netflix2.8/5
- IMDb5.9/1018,652 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes61%
Trailer
Plot summary
In the 1960s, Dr. Mercurio Arboria founds the Arboria Institute, a research facility built around "Serenity Through Technology" and the promise of perpetual human happiness. By 1983, his protégé Dr. Barry Nyle runs it. Elena, kept there in captivity, has a growing telepathic ability that a glowing prism device holds in check, and days pass under heavy sedation. Nyle conducts therapy sessions with her, and in one of them she asks to see her father; he answers that she is not well enough. At night he goes home to his wife Rosemary and takes prescription medication from Benway Pharmacy before bed. Nurse Margo also works at the institute.
Cast
- Ryley Zingeras Unmasked Sentionaut (as Riley Zinger)
- Geoffrey Conderas Mutant
- Sara Stockstadas Anna Arboria
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was financed by DVD residuals from Tombstone (1993): director Panos Cosmatos paid for his own first feature with money earned by a film his father had directed.
- Panos Cosmatos made the film as part of his own healing. His mother died in July 1997 after a lengthy battle with cancer, leaving him in “a slow motion mode of self-destruction and binge drinking”, and when his father, the director George P. Cosmatos, died in April 2005 the grief compounded and he started therapy.
- When Stranger Things was said to be a direct homage to Beyond the Black Rainbow, co-creator Matt Duffer told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016 that he had never seen the film, while Ross Duffer admitted to having seen “a little” of it.
- The film was shot in three weeks on a modified Panavision 35 mm camera, suggested by cinematographer Norm Li, who noted that Cosmatos's references, mostly films from the '70s and '80s, “were all grainy, colorful, and full of texture” and felt 35 mm was “the only way to shoot”.
- The flashback sequence carries an extensive use of the Mellotron, a scene for which Cosmatos had been using Pink Floyd's “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” as a temp track.
