Mysterium Delirium

Here's a fun one from our youth: Beat the Deva (1980). A wacky student film that combines noir, New Age, and the classical music of Scriabin.

Caspar J. Upanishad is a film maker who works as a private eye to make ends meet. But he's thinking there might be money in this New Age stuff he's been hearing about. His girlfriend is playing something odd on the piano, and he finds out it's by Scriabin. He learns that Scriabin, or Screech as they call him, didn't just compose pretty sonatas, but also saw music as colors, was ispired by semi-divine Devas, and planned an enormous festival of sound, smells, tastes, colors and peace and unity in the foothills of the Himalayas, called the Mysterium. But he died before he could make it happen. (BTW, the Scriabin stuff is legit - even the "Scrjabin" spelling.) But Upanishad realizes that he was probably bumped off because he was getting too close.

He goes to a professor at Harvard for info, and is warned about the danger or color-music theory. Indeed, some thugs beat him up outside to get him off the case. While he's unconscious, he is visited by a cute little animated deva, who lets him know that he, Casper, is the chosen one - the one who will trigger world peace by staging Scriabin's Mysterium.

But Upanishad's name is Caspar, not Casper. Could the Devas have made a mistake. And why was there a sore on Upanishad's lip, right where Scriabin had a carbuncle - that killed him!?!?

This is a super-low budget student film, under one-hour long. But it manages to be stylish, smart and funny. Some parts are filmed in noirish black an white. Some are even silent, with old-timey intertitles. The Devas and the info dumps about the Mysterium are all colorfully animated. Plus, it's full of dumb jokes and Upanishad driving up and down Storrow and Mem. Drive. Don't you love it when a movie shows someone driving somewhere you know, and it doesn't make any sense? Driving east, then west, then crossing the river, then east and west again, then back to where they started? OK, maybe that's just me.

Also, the soundtrack is all Scriabin, and he wrote some cool stuff.

We know about this because Ms. Spenser went to art school with one of the animators. We got to see it open with Suzanne Pitt's Asparagus, which is actaully on the Criterion Channel. But you can find Beat the Deva on YouTube and Vimeo. And I hope you do. 

Tron: Leto

I knew it was trash going in. After all, Jared Leto is in it. But I figured I might as well watch Tron: Ares (2025). For all its faults, it wasn't even as bad as expected.

The state of play: ENCOM, the good gaming and virtual reality corporation, and it's rival, evil corporation, Dillinger, are trying to bring virtual reality into real reality. Evan Peters, head of Dillinger, is demoing his latest line of 3D-printed war toys, including an artificial soldier, Ares (Jared Leto). When the impressed customers leave, the tanks, guns and Leto all turn to dust. As nepo-baby Peter's mom, Gillian Anderson reminds him, without the "permanence code", none of these constructs will last more than 29 minutes.

Greta Lee, on the other hand, is in ENCOM's secret polar lab, looking for the permanence code, supposedly left by founder Jeff Bridges, wayback in the 80s. Since ENCOM is having a big gamer's conference and the CEO (Lee) is out of pocket, things are getting dicey for the company. 

And Leto is back in the Grid, an artificial life-form back in Tronlandia. He is beginning to think Peters is evil, and maybe doesn't have his best interests in mind.

The rest of the plot plays out like you'd expect, with Grid creatures like Leto and crony Jody Turner-Smith experiencing the real world and becoming more human. No big surprises. But I was surprised by how good it looked. Director Joachim Rønning did himself proud. Many of the in-Grid sequences have more than a touch of 2001's slit-scan neon feeling. All in a palette based on reds.

Greta Lee did well in a sort of nothing good corporate boss as boss nerd role. Evan Peters was great as that contemporary type pf nepo baby, where lies are just alternate facts and consequences all fall on someone else. His mother, Gillian Anderson, plays the old-style evil - when she promises weapons of war, by god she delivers. She is very disappointed in her son.

Jared Leto is about as expected - he plays an artificial lifeform artificially. I wouldn't say he ruins the experience.

So, not a good movie. But I enjoyed it anyway.