If any of you people reading this watch Family Guy, you might recall and episode where they poke fun of independent cinema. It had black and white photography, a clown cooking pancakes and flipping them through the air in slow motion while a girl lying on a couch stared while smoking a cigarette. Obviously this doesn't make any sense at all, and that's exactly what Begotten is.
Don't get me wrong the concept of this film sounds great, God killing himself; mother earth-giving birth to the land, Son of Earth being tortured and whatever. Unfortunately the way this film is constructed lacks substance. Its just like that Family Guy segment, there is a lot of images juxtaposed but they don't give a clear meaning to what is going on. I appreciate films that make the audience think, but quite honestly if it wasn't for the closing credits saying God Killing Himself played by some guy, Mother Earthy played by some girl I met on the street, Son of Earth played by my friend Bob, I can assure you I might have thought this film was a complete waste of time and pointless. Those credits are the only thing that makes the viewer think there was some sort of intellectual thought behind this nonsense, unfortunately I still don't see any significance so I'll just say the director was just being a freak. If intellectualism was the director's intent, then I'm sorry because there is no point to this silly story.
If anything this is like a stylish black and white mess of a violent soft-core porn film. Why? Well that girl blows the dead guy in the opening scene and then starts masturbating. Afterwards you have some guys dressed in cloaks beating up the girl with sticks. Most of the time this film consists of these cloak guys dragging a nude person through all sorts of terrain. When they get tired they just beat him up. Hmm, when they stop to rest they beat him up. Great way of conserving energy!
I admire first time filmmakers for trying to make films in black and white, well its actually grayscale but Begotten is literally black and white. The use of two colors makes this film look extremely old. Like I said, the concept is great, but it fails due to poor direction. Maybe if the scenes hadn't been that long it might have been better. Well, quite honestly I take that back because I saw most of the film through my fast forward button and it was still very long. Critics that said this was a masterpiece, a brilliant work of art, and a revolutionary piece of cinema, I laugh at their silly comments. HA! Simply because they didn't want to seem as if they didn't understand the movie and didn't want to admit it to millions of people, they just had to say Oh, yeah great stuff. Geez, just admit you didn't understand it so call it crap, that's what I say. I still prefer Eraserhead over this film any day; at least you could talk some sense out of it. Well, David Lynch certainly brought a new breed of weird films. But, Begotten does succeed in being much weirder than Eraserhead. Begotten can be tedious, ridiculous, or brilliant, you decide.
Don't get me wrong the concept of this film sounds great, God killing himself; mother earth-giving birth to the land, Son of Earth being tortured and whatever. Unfortunately the way this film is constructed lacks substance. Its just like that Family Guy segment, there is a lot of images juxtaposed but they don't give a clear meaning to what is going on. I appreciate films that make the audience think, but quite honestly if it wasn't for the closing credits saying God Killing Himself played by some guy, Mother Earthy played by some girl I met on the street, Son of Earth played by my friend Bob, I can assure you I might have thought this film was a complete waste of time and pointless. Those credits are the only thing that makes the viewer think there was some sort of intellectual thought behind this nonsense, unfortunately I still don't see any significance so I'll just say the director was just being a freak. If intellectualism was the director's intent, then I'm sorry because there is no point to this silly story.
If anything this is like a stylish black and white mess of a violent soft-core porn film. Why? Well that girl blows the dead guy in the opening scene and then starts masturbating. Afterwards you have some guys dressed in cloaks beating up the girl with sticks. Most of the time this film consists of these cloak guys dragging a nude person through all sorts of terrain. When they get tired they just beat him up. Hmm, when they stop to rest they beat him up. Great way of conserving energy!
I admire first time filmmakers for trying to make films in black and white, well its actually grayscale but Begotten is literally black and white. The use of two colors makes this film look extremely old. Like I said, the concept is great, but it fails due to poor direction. Maybe if the scenes hadn't been that long it might have been better. Well, quite honestly I take that back because I saw most of the film through my fast forward button and it was still very long. Critics that said this was a masterpiece, a brilliant work of art, and a revolutionary piece of cinema, I laugh at their silly comments. HA! Simply because they didn't want to seem as if they didn't understand the movie and didn't want to admit it to millions of people, they just had to say Oh, yeah great stuff. Geez, just admit you didn't understand it so call it crap, that's what I say. I still prefer Eraserhead over this film any day; at least you could talk some sense out of it. Well, David Lynch certainly brought a new breed of weird films. But, Begotten does succeed in being much weirder than Eraserhead. Begotten can be tedious, ridiculous, or brilliant, you decide.