Talk:Beyond the Black Rainbow

Plot synopsis
Can anyone come up with a better plot synopsis?

I'd attempt it, but, truthfully, I'm not sure what I just watched. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 21:43, 10 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I plan to that! Musicaindustrial (talk) 13:40, 13 April 2013 (UTC)


 * You're doing a great job. I'll try watching the movie again and taking some notes, to help with the synopsis, if you want. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 16:27, 14 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that would be great. Thanks! I still want to add to the article two more subsections in "Themes" ("Identity" and "Control") and a whole new section ("Production"), so all help is welcome! Musicaindustrial (talk) 21:32, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * After watching the film about 15 times, I decided to write a detailed plot. This is now one of my most favourite movies of all times. The key to enjoying it is to watch the facial expressions of Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers), knowing that he, too, has psychic powers, including the ability to know what a person is going to say. He knows his wife is lying when she says she is meditating, he knows Margo is guilty before going to question her, he is bored and annoyed by Arboria's inane prattle that he's heard thousands of times before. --One Salient Oversight (talk) 04:01, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * How on earth does this have to do with psychic powers? He just pays attention to people behavior and other cues. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.184.163.13 (talk) 18:49, 1 September 2016 (UTC)


 * In any case, there are tons of interviews with Panos stating that the entire intention of Barry's involvement in the Arboria Institute revolves around psychic powers and Barry harvesting them to suit his own cravings for power, domination, and control. It's also why reviews that emphasize Panos's "boomer criticism" are kinda slanted: While Dr. Arboria (standing for boomers and the 1960s) is naive in Panos's eyes, Barry (standing for the fearmongering, paranoid, manipulative, and power-seeking Reaganite Right of the 1980s) is outright evil. It's why sources such as German film critic Hauke Lehmann (in this issue of the annual Swiss academic cinema studies magazine Cinema dedicated to "Intoxication in Cinema", where he's calling BtBR an "even more advanced version" of the themes found in Easy Rider and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), the blog Father Son Holy Gore, and (dismissively) Hollywood Reporter state in a nutshell that Panos's message is that the 1960s went wrong because they weren't prepared for what lay beyond Huxley and Leary's doors of perception, thus inviting the even worse counter-movement in the form of the conservative, right-wing 1980s. --2003:EF:170D:4546:D5C0:4831:B113:C315 (talk) 05:07, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

List of Reviews
Positive Reviews:


 * Slant Magazine:
 * The Village Voice:
 * Time Out New York:

Mixed Reviews:

Negative Reviews:
 * The Austin Chronicle:
 * The New York Times:


 * The Boston Globe:
 * New York Post:
 * Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Musicaindustrial (talk) 13:31, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I got most of them, but I substituted a few choices. The New York Post is a trashy tabloid, and I don't consider it a reliable source for anything.  The rest are fine, though I usually try to avoid using Slant, as it's a bit too close to a blog.  I included a few non-mainstream sources, as well, such as Fangoria and Film Threat.  I took out the YouTube link, too.  Usually, Wikipedia doesn't link to YouTube videos, though there's no real policy disallowing it.  You can re-add it, if you want, but it probably won't survive Good Article review. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 01:55, 15 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Musicaindustrial (talk) 12:42, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Carl Sagan
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 177.134.175.227 (talk) 16:30, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Fair-use images in this article
There are three fair-use screen caps used in this article: Per NFCC #3 that's excessive; one ought to be enough to convey a sense of the film's visual style. I haven't seen the film so I don't have a sense for which of three is most representative. Mackensen (talk) 13:53, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * File:BeyondTheBlackRainbowScreenshot03.png
 * File:BeyondTheBlackRainbowScreenshot04.png
 * File:BeyondTheBlackRainbowScreenshot05.png

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Presenting information as current when it's from the past
Under reception, a line reads:

"The film has an approval rating of 52% on Rotten Tomatoes based on twenty-eight reviews and an average score of 5.7/10."

Isn't this considered problematic, since it appears current in writing, but is based on a prior time? Not quite sure if we're expected to surmise an implicit time reference here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.71.141.102 (talk) 17:07, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't consider it problematic, no. But you could add "as of" wording if you wanted.  For example: "As of September 21, it has a ##% approval rating". NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 17:21, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Re-appraisal
In addition to the fact that BtBR is garnerning spots on best-of-the-21st-century-so-far lists, one could add a bit about a recent re-appraisal of the film by critics since the release of Panos's next film Mandy (2018). In contrast to older reviews on RT, more than half the reviews on the first page of reviews when ordered by date are fresh and some of those, while still noting the film's deliberate obscurity and opaqueness, are actual rave reviews. Since the film's release, it has gained more than 10% on the RT score (where it pisses me off a bit that when it was first released, everything above 50% was still considered 'fresh', but not anymore, making it still 'rotten' even though it's almost at 60% by now). --2003:EF:13CE:6A79:65A7:86E8:8164:F81A (talk) 03:11, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Boomer criticism
Should I considered Panos a Gen Xer since he was born in 1974 or not?Espngeek (talk) 17:32, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
 * People born in the early and mid 1970s are definitely Gen X. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 03:45, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * As stated above, any reviews that emphasize Panos's "boomer criticism" are kinda slanted. There are tons of interviews Panos has given on the differences between Dr. Arboria and Barry: While Dr. Arboria (standing for boomers and the 1960s) is naive in Panos's eyes, Barry (standing for the fearmongering, paranoid, manipulative, and power-seeking Reaganite Right of the 1980s) is outright evil. Panos most obviously spells it out whenever he critizes Reagan's hypocritical war on drugs, both openly in his interviews, and semiotically in BtBR (just take Barry's Noriega jacket referencing Manuel Noriega, a key figure of Reagan's war on drugs, the Iran-Contra affair, and of rumors regarding massive involvement of the CIA in drug trafficking under Reagan). If anything, Panos is not so much critical of the progressive social, political, cultural utopias of the 1960s, but rather of the esoterical and occult knacks of the era. Panos doesn't so much critizize the goals of 1960s counterculture, but its irrational, post-secular means and leanings, also in its reactions towards the valuable revelations about society that came with drugs and psychedelia. That's what Panos means when he's talking about Dr. Arboria's naivety, as contrasted to successor Barry's outright evil.


 * It's why sources such as German film critic Hauke Lehmann (in this issue of the annual Swiss academic cinema studies magazine Cinema dedicated to "Intoxication in Cinema", where he's calling BtBR an "even more advanced version" of the themes found in Easy Rider and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), the blog Father Son Holy Gore, Flood Magazine, and (dismissively) Hollywood Reporter state in a nutshell that Panos's message is that the progressive social, political, cultural utopias of the 1960s went wrong because they weren't prepared yet for what lay beyond Huxley and Leary's doors of perception, thus inviting the much worse counter-movement in the form of the conservative, right-wing 1980s (a 1980s of which Flood Magazine's review of Mandy discusses "how their [Reaganite] subjects have [...] become ingrained in the fabric of our culture, abstract byproducts of destructive policies that will never be mentioned in any history book [...] the resulting spike in decayed relationships, and the generation of children who grew up totally alienated as a result"). In this perspective, even Jeremiah Sand from Mandy is not truly a boomer but more of a twin of Reaganite control freak Barry from BtBR, even if he's disguising himself in a countercultural cloak, just like Barry acts as Dr. Arboria's successor. --2003:EF:170D:4546:D5C0:4831:B113:C315 (talk) 05:18, 5 August 2022 (UTC)