That's Entertainment

Looking for a good movie to see this coming Spring? The City Pages' Matthew Wilder has a suggestion, as he provides a preview of an upcoming film series at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis:

.....in February, the Walker Art Center will present Text of Light, a series of [Stan] Brakhage screenings played to live musical accompaniment by alt-rock hipsters such as Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo. And in the meantime, there's a magnificent new DVD set from the Criterion Collection called By Brakhage, which is simply invaluable.

Alt-rock hipsters and magnificent movies? That sounds pretty good. So get your popcorn ready and settle in to the following:

Indeed, there has never been a movie that you "feel in your viscera" more than Brakhage's "The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes" (1971). Not content to make art at a remove, Brakhage goes for full-body contact with the viewer. In "The Act," he records the process of several autopsies conducted in a grim, old-timey Denver morgue. Like the morticians who lead him gently through the steps, the filmmaker starts small--with the shock of unseeing eyes on a gaunt-faced corpse. Then he works his way up: A beautiful blond woman is sheared and gutted; a human head is scalped, hot-drilled, and removed of its brain--a sad, gray, gloopy mass of unexceptional jelly.

We're not meant to look at these insides, though we possess them ourselves; the biological impulse that says "Look away!" is planted deep. .... As a result, for many viewers, "The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes" is an almost surefire way to a panic attack.

By the way, Wilder is recommending you go see this piece of art. In fact, he can't hardly wait:

The deeper Brakhage delves into himself--into realms that are beyond depiction--the further we see ourselves reflected in his recesses. For all their amateurish bits and hippie longueurs, the films in By Brakhage finally achieve what was once called, without flinching, Great Poetry.

Yes, great poetry, I'm sure. And the City Pages is a great newspaper.