The Stan Brakhage Film Series
selection for the month of December contained an interesting variety of
Brakhage’s work. “I… Dreaming” was the opening film, one of Brakhage’s more
shown pieces. One of the the few sound films Stan made, the soundtrack syncs
and jumps in conjunction with the jump cuts and the scratched-in-frame words.
Scenes in Stan’s house are punctuated by flashing words referencing what seems
to be his own state of grieving. Eerie lighting pervades many shots, shadows
filling most of the frame, usually silhouettes of Brakhage. The daylight comes
in starkly blue and while most of the shots are lit to show much brightness, it
is melancholic.
“Cat’s Cradle” is interesting in
that it consistently uses one to two second cuts largely revolving around the
same material. The first parts seem to revolve around the titular cat. Then
there are cuts of a female which come in somewhat subconsciously. Quick
Brackhage-ian intercutting pervades the film building the familiar rhythmic
trance we see in several of his films. Most of the film has a reddish tint –perhaps
the underlying passion that seems to be underneath the domestic scene.The film
ends on a more overtly passionate note, showing two people coming together. This
seems to be a theme in a lot of Stan’s work – romantic union between man and
woman.
“Loving” was the next film. I found
this to be the most striking. The film is set in an outdoor scene in the woods.
Two naked lovers are suggested to be copulating, but this is not shown
graphically. The colors are vibrant and beautiful, the greens exceptionally
bright and striking contrasted against the vibrant azure blue skies. In-between
the shots of the lovers there are interesting shots of the green trees.
Brakhage has an eye for portraying or uncovering the latent transcendental
qualities of nature and light. One shot in particular that was interesting was
Brakhage rotating the camera on an axis a full 360 degrees in the middle of a
densely green wooded area in the middle of the daylight. These scenes that took
place outside of the realm of the lovers seemed to serve the purpose of
elevating the lovers’ domain as a sort of eden-esque environment solely for
their enjoyment. It was quite a beautiful film both symbolically and of course
visually.
Several
other films were shown and I will provide my thoughts on the remainders in
brief. “Marilyn’s Window” was again strikingly beautiful and eminently
transcendental. I believe that this must be a combination of the way Stan shot
his films and his keen eye that allowed him to film subjects in such a manner
that their underlying majesty could be portrayed. It is mysterious to me that
he was able to do this with such apparent improvisational ease, as though he
was tapped into the poetic substratum of the mind or of the mind’s
interpretation of reality. “The Lion and Zebra Make God’s Raw Jewels”, “Yggradasil”,
and “Love Song” were all interesting in their own right and exemplified Stan’s “seeing”
films – that is to say his films that focused more on form than on portraying something
symbolically. These films tend to have long scenes that contain hundreds of
hand painted frames of Stan’s art, usually played back at a rapid-fire pace,
and usually alternating the speed with variations on the rhythms.
At these moments I find myself
grasping to understand just “how” I’m supposed to be interpreting these
sequences, which is inherently absurd, as they are meant to be seen as purely
visual expressions. Interesting that by using film to portray something in the
most abstract and purely visual sense you point out the inherent symbolic and
metaphorical overlay we film viewers are used to projecting onto the screen. I
find these sequences challenging as my mind has nothing to latch onto, except
racing thoughts trying desperately to pin-down some sort of analysis. In
closing, Brakhage’s films ceaselessly stretch the expectations of the movie
goer and each unseen work helps us to at least attempt to understand the man behind
his highly idiosyncratic art. In other words, the depth of his work requires
commitment and dedication to unearth, and yet one will not find this time to be
without an end result of immense enrichment and appreciation for Brakhage’s
layered genius.
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