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Flicker

• Written and directed by Nik Sheehan
• Classification: 14A
• 

Part literary biography, part science fiction, and part and parcel counterculture certifiable lunacy, Nik Sheehan's Flicker is a documentary with mood-altering aspirations. For those who like their escapist entertainment raunchier than Twilight but less violent than Quantum of Solace, this Canadian doc will keep the economic news in the papers and the Christmas music in the malls out of your mind for all of its 72-minute running time.

On second thought, escapist may be underselling the ideology that inspired Flicker. Try the chance to achieve transcendence. Travel through the time-space continuum. Soar on a drugless high. After all, these were some of the claims Brion Gysin — sound poet, calligrapher, part-time Canadian and full-time beat-generation Svengali — made when he unveiled his dream machine in the 1960s.

The machine was based on the "flicker effect" theory proposed by W. Grey Walter in his book The Living Brain (1953). By replicating the exact frequency of alpha waves in the brain through the manipulation of light inside a rotating cylinder with patterned cutouts, the machine induces the perception of shapes and images in the user's mind. Anyone sitting close to the machine with eyes closed can then create "their own spiritual movies" and experience parallel existences (that's Sixties-speak for hallucinations).

Instead of replacing television sets in every household, as Gysin had hoped, dream machines became a symbol of what's revolutionary about the counterculture and what's so boneheaded about it.

Based on John Geiger's well-received book Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and the Dream Machine, Sheehan's compelling documentary delivers a culturally incisive job of unmasking Gysin. That's no small feat, considering the mercurial and spectre-like nature of a man who believed himself to be the reincarnation of the 10th-century King of Assassins and who counted writer William S. Burroughs, singer Marianne Faithfull and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones among his friends and lovers.

Sheehan goes out of his way to prove that, for a man who lived in infamy and died (in 1986) in obscurity, Gysin's influence on today's culture extends beyond rap and dub poetry and into the emergence of audiences as creators of their own computer-made and distributed entertainment. Experts from stuffy neurosurgeons to hip DJs are interviewed in an attempt to shed light on Gysin as a visionary and the dream machine as a precursor to anything Apple Inc. puts an "i" in front of and sells to the creative masses: iPhones, iPods, iMovies.

Where's the escapism I promised, you must be wondering by now? It's there in the journeys that Sheehan and a replica of the dream machine make to New York, Paris and Tangier, among other destinations, tracing Gysin's wandering existence and giving substantial camera time to counterculture dinosaurs who talk, dress and look as if the Sixties never ended. They may espouse different views but all agree on one thing: A decent haircut is clearly still a sign of selling out.

More importantly, escapism comes through in the open-ended tone of the film. Sheehan recreates Gysin's world with a skeptic's belief. Despite the scientific basis of the "flicker effect," the doc leaves open the possibility that it may all be a load of hogwash. There's just enough distance between filmmaker and subject to filter in a layer of bemusement, befuddlement even. Guest appearances by the likes of Iggy Pop and Faithfull confirm their reputations as kings and queens of rock — but also its court jesters. Some of the visual tricks to simulate the flicker effect or suggest mind-bending consequences are delightfully tacky without being maliciously ironic.

It all adds up, somehow. Flicker may not deliver the drugless high of the dream machine, but it does its bit to elevate the discussion of Gysin's legacy while putting down, gently and lovingly, its wackier side. In the hands of the right director, escapism can be a balanced act.

Special to The Globe and Mail