Begotten (1991)

Severini

Severini

Chymist
I finally watched this movie last night and for me It was an unique experience.

I know nothing about experimental movies but I don´t think there is anything like it to watch.This is what I could absorb as a kind of "plot":

"In an abandoned house, God cuts himself with a razor (in a scene that would be unwatchable if it was in colour) and dies.From his remains, emerges mother Earth, who collects God´s sperm and gives birth to a man.
This man is left alone convulsioning in a vast and barren landscape and is attacked by faceless cannibals.From them on, grotesque scenes (which you can only guess most of the time) suceed..."

There is a great deal of repetition in this movie.Every scene is extended to a point you want to move your eyes away from the screen, but it progresses before you do it.

Begotten is visually stunning.It was shot in reversed black and white and then rephotographed - for every minute on screen it was necessary 8 to 10 hours of post production, that is said it took eight months.

Just like another very gross movie "Blood Of the Beasts", this movie would be unwatchable if it was made in colour and I assume that if it wasn´t for this treatment, most of the scenes would be also very hard to stomach.But the way they were made, you can mostly guess what is happening.But you are sure it is something terrible...

The movie has no dialogue and its soundtrack is mostly composed by nature sounds of insects like flies and crickets and bodysounds like heartbeats.There is very little "music" in it and when it comes up, it achieves a beautiful effect.

I really reccomend this movie.I didn´t think it was that gory and despite all that violence its simbology and references kept me guessing.


And in the beginning there is a phrase that is surely Ligottian:

"Life is flesh and bone convulsioning above the ground"
 
The movie is as if a druidical cult had re-enacted, for real, three Bible stories - creation, the Nativity and Jesus' torture and death on Golgotha. That's not a bad description, but there seems to be more to it than the seemingly one-to-one religious correspondences
God cuts himself with a straight razor, afterwards, he gives birth to mother earth, which then gives birth through gods semen, son of earth.

This is a one and a half-an-hour movie that sort of depicts a dark version of how god created the world. Its surreal, dark and poetic. The most important aspect of the film are the visuals. Its shot in a very grainy black and white film, using both slow-motion and normal shooting. Sometimes even fast film and stop-motion. The scenes are long and dragged out, that sets a very weird mood.

Merhige later filmed Marilyn Mansons' video 'Cryptorchid' which is done in the same way; but be warned of his later movie 'Shadow of the Vampire' which is rather dull :eek:
 
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I used to own a copy of Begotten. It's worth a rather shiny penny now, and I wish I still had it. I brought it to work to let someone borrow one day, and someone stole it. It still brings a smile to my face to imagine what their reaction was when they popped it in the DVD player. :)
 
this is a great movie, it seems like a movie made on another world and is great for zoneing out to some great black and white visuals.
 
The film is described in the opening card as an incantation of matter. What is most interesting to me is not so much its nightmarish theology or the substitution of language with the suffering of the flesh but the familiar images it invokes, even when it is almost dissolving into static or shadow play: victims of firebombings. Holodomor. Doré's Hell. [or perhaps this is the film acting as a Rorschach Test, as was mentioned before, and how this borderline visual cacophony appears to me]

There are also both christian and pre-christian symbols at work surrounding mutilation, cannibalism and ritual sacrifice. But it in the end I think it is about flesh convulsing and life feeding on life and the perpetual cycle of predation; it might even be a materialist's view of life clothed or disguised as theogony and deicide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHXgNn18z90
 
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