RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH

RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH (2010). John Alan Simon, dir., script, from the novel by Philip K. Dick (1976/1985) — see Wikipedia entry for complexities of publication. Open Pictures et al. (prod.) / Freestyle Releasing and Freestyle Digital Media (theatrical and other media dist.), 2014. See IMDb for full company credits.

Dystopian, loosely autobiographical, somewhat mystical/religious SF set in an authoritarian (and getting worse) alternative USA about the time the compact disc (CD) was introduced, hence, ca. 1982, but after the Cold War, hence after 1991 (cf. and contrast mixing of periods in a pomo film like the 1986 BLUE VELVET). "Making the necessary changes" (mutatis mutandis), the film follows Dick's following of A. E. van Vogt's "dictum that every 800 words a new idea should be introduced," in John | Huntington's formulation, with "new idea" definitely including plot twists and reversals, so a brief plot summary would be difficult, and users of this wiki are directed to the Wikipedia entry or similar sources. Relevant here is the "Vast Active Living Intelligence System" (VALIS) present in the film, but some hundred light-years away, requiring It/Them to communicate with Its elect on Earth via a satellite that looks like a variation on a geodesic sphere with hints of buckyballs. Voice communication is female, in the mystic tradition of the Shekinah (God's presence [at least as experienced by straight males]) and embodied Sophia (Wisdom). Communication in one instance, though — with the VALIS-touched (?) of an alternative Earth where there was no Protestant Reformation — is by keyboard and monitor, on what looks like a cross between an old computer and a Telex machine, or a Telex with a monitor. In a twist fairly late in the plot, the VALIS satellite is destroyed, and the final twist is that freeing ourselves from tyranny will require our own action, catalyzed by one rock and roll song (with possibly others to come), produced by electric guitars and similarly everyday musical instruments and studio equipment and brought to what we see of its young audience in the film's climax by a small "boom box": if there is to be a revolution it will be triggered by rock'n'roll brought to kids by technology that is relatively low-tech, unexotic, and mundane.

Note shot of the protagonist's vision of himself within a largely transparent VALIS satellite and the dialog suggesting that VALIS as just the satellite would have God "a finite reality" of "a mere machine."

RDE 29&30/IV/16