Dog Star Man: Part I (1963)
From a murky landscape, a wooded mountain emerges. We watch the sun. We see a bearded man climbing up the mountain through the snow. He carries an ax, and he's accompanied by a dog. His labors continue. There is no soundtrack. Images rush past - water, trees, and surfaces too close up to distinguish. He struggles. A fire burns. Nature, in long shots and magnified, is formidable and silent. It's tough going; he carries on. In a capillary, blood flows.
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Wonderful character development!
Very Cool!!!
How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.
One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.
Stan Brakhage made this half-hour short film over 50 years ago when he was in his late 20s. It is the first of four parts, however there is a prologue which runs for almost as long as this first part and Brakhage made a 5th part as well over 30 years after part 4. I wish I could talk a bit more about what was happening, but honestly I have no idea. The camera was so wild and all over the place to understand even remotely what was going on. of course, I could read it, but that's not the purpose of film as medium. You need to understand it from what you see. Occasionally, there were a man and a dog visible, but that's all I could make out. Looked like they were living in some remote era. I am not the greatest fan of Brakhage, but I definitely prefer his kaleidoscope-like animated film that only run for a couple minutes and it baffled me to see how popular this one here is. I found it boring from start to finish and have no plans to ever see it again. Not recommended.
You may be bored silly or you may be mesmerised. You might find yourself slipping into a catatonic state. You might glance away from the screen for a moment, but you'd be advised not too. Stan Brakhage's remarkable mythopoetic epic brought back a rush of 8mm memories for me from my childhood. There are incredible images of beauty and there are bizarre images that will have you rewinding the tape to ask yourself if you just saw what you thought you saw. (You did.) Highest recommendation!
If you like to feel like you are better than other people, see this movie and pretend to like it. This film combines short, chiefly unrelated shots in order to explore the viewing experience. Though there is basic technical skill involved and Brakhage must have certainly spent a long time making Dog Star Man, if the film were cut up and recombined in much any other way, it is doubtful anyone would know the difference. This film comes from the same sort of mentality which created color field painting and other such things which chiefly interest people who don't have anything useful to do with their time. If you haven't seen it yet and aren't on acid, avoid this film at all costs.
This is not a "movie" in any hollywood-sense.Close your eyes, watch as the patterns emerge from the darkness, slip in a few memory stills from the movie of your life, make the white noise as silent as possible in your cranium (no sound in this movie at all, unless your vcr makes a hissing noise), take this seemingly unreal experience and transpose it to film, scratch the film with forks, burn it with lighters, paint on the film, crinkle it, twist it, swallow it whole the way the tibetans swallow strips of cloth to clean their intestines, wash it, reel it and see the movie of your dreams."great" isn't good enough. This film goes off the scale, as we mere humans have no method of measuring the value of such an experience. If I had 30 thumbs they would all be up. If I had to choose from 1 to five stars, I would have to obliterate the stars, turn them into black holes, wait til a few more stars gather round and post them all right here for the world to see::::::::>