Stan Brakhage's Scene Stealer....Ending Worlds and Open Eyes

I had the compulsion to throw in a brief cameo and it so happens it's the 200th post, not my intention to swoop in and to nab this somewhat arbitrary moment. Rest assured, Kotto, you've built nearly all the rungs to get here, so the credit falls largely on you.

What an item to inaugurate the 200th with...

Kotto and my discussion of late has been upon his recent fascination with all things pleasant: nuclear war and post apocalyptic living. There's nothing like the end of the world to stir up the old existential motivation for living. As with nearly all film, though, as much as they may frighten us, there is always the relief that what we are seeing, no matter how terrifying or horrible, is but a dream. We can always turn off the set, or walk out of the theatre back into the comfort of our lives even after watching people get hacked to pieces or blown up. The virtual cannot replace the real experience. But I digress...

Before I go off into a exposition about how seeking out 'end-of-the-world' films is seeking an end to film itself - an attempt to finally raze the virtual world and it's promises - I'll have to stop myself and my pretentious rantings and get on with my post. What's after the virtual post apocalyptic? I asked Stan Brakhage this question once and he answered, "the real." It's funny old Stan came up, rest his soul, because I just finished watching a gem of existential realism done by him called The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes.

If you've ever wondered what happens to you when you die then this is the film for you. Brakhage puts it all into perspective without any special effects. Instead he injects a healthy dose of realism. No thrillrides here folks, only bare facts. The Act of Seeing is a half hour of morgue and autopsy work done with an amazing indelicacy not usually visited up our sacred bodies...brings to mind preparing the bird for the feast, or the roasted pig. Food for thought.

At any rate it is a difficult film to watch no matter how many times you've enjoyed the pleasurable experience of Cannibal Holocaust. The silence that accompanies the images feels at times likened to the void that you may feel you're being sucked into as they're pulling the scalp up over the corpse's eyes to get at the thinking parts inside the noggin.

In the end Brakhage is, sometimes very overtly, not that he needs to, showing us the parallel between this living form that we put so much into and make so much of in the world, and the detritus that lies on the table being hacked up and pulled apart. Puts human fragility and our thread-like hold on life into sharp focus.

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.