How often do you think about dolphins? It’s a topic worth turning over, which makes especially valuable (deep breath as I say the title) John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office, a documentary about the man whose work with dolphins blurred boundaries between science and counterculture. The filmmakers are Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens. While the former is better-known for his fiction features, including the recently restored Nadja, his portraits of artists—such as Sam Shepherd, William Eggleston, and Hampton Fancher—make him well-suited to the project. The latter, meantime, is one of our great working documentarians who’s shortly off Invention, a docufiction hybrid-of-sorts which concerns sui generis experiments and the conspiracies they may or may not have engendered.
Aided by voiceover from Chloe Sevigny and a hypnotic soundtrack, John Lilly offers a suitably dense exploration of a complicated mind. I spoke to Almereyda and Stephens as the film begins its theatrical run from Oscilloscope.
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Music courtesy of Lex Walton: “Love Theme from an Unreleased Film” from the album Giving It Up.