While you go
out to see most other kinds of movies, you must go
inward to see the extraordinary avant-garde films of Stan Brakhage. Foremost among American experimental film artists, Brakhage influenced the evolution of the moving image for nearly 50 years (his impact is readily seen on MTV), and this meticulously prepared Criterion Collection anthology represents a virtual goldmine of Brakhage's finest, most challenging work. Challenging because--as observed by Brakhage film scholar Fred Camper in the accompanying booklet--these 26 carefully selected films require the viewer to be fully receptive to "the act of seeing with one's own eyes" (to quote the title of one film, consisting entirely of autopsy footage), which is to say, open to the perceptual and psychological responses that are provoked by Brakhage's non-narrative shorts, ranging here from nine
seconds to 31 minutes in length. While "Dog Star Man" (1961-64) is regarded as Brakhage's masterpiece, what emerges from this superb collection is the creative coherence of Brakhage's total vision. Through multilayered textures (often painted or scratched directly on film) and infinite combinations of imagery and rhythmic cutting, these films (most of them soundless) represent the most daring and purely artistic fulfillment of Criterion's ongoing goal to preserve important films on DVD.
--Jeff Shannon
Reader Reviews
I rented this and watched it carefully over a period of days. Now I'm going to buy it from one place or another. It's one of the few DVDs I'd call essential, for me at least. To answer the one-star reviewers who thought these films are just "pretentous," "boring," or "huh?," I have this to say. "Meh." If this isn't your type of thing at all, then who cares what you think? I won't bother to read your reviews of Xenakis CDs either. Go back to watching "An Officer and a Gentleman" or something. One reviewer who had something intelligent to say was miffed at the lack of mid-period Brackage films. That's a good point. I didn't get much of a sense of what he was trying to do in the 70's. There's just two from that decade in the set and it's not enough. But I disagree with this guy about the value of the later films, which do dominate the second disc. I think that they're all very different and intensely fascinating in different ways. I wouldn't recommend watching more than 5 or 6 in one sitting. But if you watch a few in a dark, completely silent setting (I like my noise-blocking headphones), I think you might find that these are some of the most interesting films you could hope to see. These aren't just random paintings on film strung together. There are specific patterns, colors, shapes and movements that dominate each film, as well as the underlying images on the film, all of which give a definite identity to each one. Looking at some of them a second time after a few days I found myself saying, "Oh yeah, that one!" That wouldn't happen if there wasn't some shape or character to the films. Dog Star Man, the main item on disc 1, is a great film, and lots of people have thought so, for lots of reasons, for a long while. Not much more to say about that. In the interviews and comments on the disc, Brakhage can sometimes come across as overly arty, referential, and yes, pretentious. But his films aren't at all. Because in the films Brakhage was putting his considerable talent, insight and energy into what he really knew how to do, making something he hadn't seen before, but wanted to see. That's just real explicative-deleted-by-Amazon art, folks.
