Tracer by Antero Alli
Tracer is the latest work with some Lynchian touches from American-Finnish independent film-maker/theatre director/author Antero Alli (b. 1952). All Antero's films are DIY productions and available through his YouTube channel.
Official synopsis (no spoilers):
After seven years of world travel, Erik returns home to reunite with his family. He first visits his ex-girlfriend Polly with high hopes of rekindling their love but Polly has changed. She now channels a Polish ancestor in a vlog on her mission to expose the corruptions of Patriarchy. When Erik visits his father Leo on his yacht, boyhood super-hero fantasies of his dad are tested against Leo's shady, perilous past. Erik finally sets out for his estranged mother Corinna to find out why she abandoned him as a boy. Meanwhile a psychic hitman in the Russian mafia experiments with a new designer drug to increase his remote viewing skills. TRACER is a cat and mouse yarn unravelling through a maze of underworld drug culture, quantum nonlocality, and a fractured family trying to pick up the pieces.
Tracer is a low-budget, black and white sci-fi (or "psi-fi") thriller with its focus on the relationship of an elder father with a shady past and his grown-up son. For me the story has a strong film noir pattern in it, and not only visually: there are father's past sins, then the eventual self-sacrifice and atonement. His fate somehow resembles for me of a Viking chief burial at sea with his boat. The Tracer guy I see as a liminal Trickster, obviously being the film's most memorable character who sports an old-fashioned moustache and constant grin, and somehow reminisces Hugo Weaving's anonymous freedom fighter, who never takes off his Guy Fawkes mask in V for Vendetta of 2005. The visits to the world of beyond and meetings with the lord of the underworld (with subtitles in the film) especially make me think of David Lynch.
About Antero Alli: I first came up with his name some time in the 1990s when I became interested in the esoteric ideas of consciousness, mind and alternative society, and was seeking out the works from such people as Timothy Leary, John C. Lilly, Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson. My being then involved in rave culture of the time contributed here, as these were often namechecked by the musicians of such acts as The KLF, Shamen, The Future Sound of London, et al). I also followed magazines like Mondo 2000 which shared info on similar topics, often featuring interviews and other stories of these same psychedelic/cyberdelic cognoscenti.
Somewhere along the line I became intrigued about the concept of the 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness (personally I compare it to Abraham Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs", even though Maslow's approach is more Cartesian-materialist), originated by Timothy Leary and further developed by Robert Anton Wilson and Antero Alli. AngelTech (New Falcon, 1987) is Antero's debut on the subject, with many other books penned by him to follow in its tow.
"He's got a Finnish name, how curious", was my first thought when I initially read about Antero's works on the dedicated mailing lists like Leri-L, and only later on I found out he was actually Finnish but had emigrated to America with his family in the late 50s.
There's a rueful story on how in the early 1980s Antero came to visit the land of his fathers and got into trouble with local authorities, when they wanted to turn him into a soldier for Finnish Defence Forces, as he had a dual citizenship and was at the legal age for conscription. The alternative for refusing the armed service would have been to go to prison. Gladly with some legal assistance, Antero was able to return to the States as a free man. He has never returned to Finland, though.
Unfortunately, as far as Finnish conspicuousness goes, Antero Alli is very little known here in the country of his origin, but hopefully that will change over time.
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