Prelude: Dog Star Man

*My rating and review of Prelude, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 is the same* Simultaneously travelling through the solar system and cell system without bearings and guided only by a man and his dog. Brakhage throws images at you at such a rate that he is always a split second ahead of your capacity to process these images in an interpretative way, which leaves you with just impressions, but as you soon realise these impressions are highly stimulating and you crave more.

An assault on rationality, pairing concrete images of the molecular to the celestial with decontextualizing visual effects. There's a stark visual rhythm to it, landing it somewhere between the humanist montage of Man with a Movie Camera and the psychedelic flourishes of Monterey Pop, but it's far more disorienting and abstract. It ultimately feels operatic and epic in scope, essentially a purist's experimental vision of the divine and a precursor to everything from Lynch to Von Trier to Malick.

Amazing to watch solely on the basis of the various techniques Brakhage helped pioneer (e.g., superimposition, rapid cutting) and take to their formal limits, all of which have had a profound impact on film aesthetics in the decades since its creation. The complete absence of sound allows for greater contemplation of the images shown, becoming a sort of antithesis to oral storytelling; here, we create the sounds in our head. *I AM RATING EACH PART THE SAME, AS I RATE 'DSM' AS A SINGLE FILM*

Immediate impression as this section finishes: first Creation... what next? The choice to forgo a soundtrack entirely is radical and brilliant; the effect is striking, and what conceivable soundtrack, whether musical, ambient, or diegetic, synchronized or aleatoric, could be anything but a distraction? (While we're at it, is the film only visual or is silence the soundtrack? Ask John Cage...)

suns, moons, bodies and hand painted art erratically combine in this exciting introduction to a tale of life and creation. ranked as one film.

Watching this makes me wonder why there aren't more movies like it. It's the kind of purely visual abstract art that would be right at home in a still art gallery, but you don't see much of in motion pictures. It's a shame, because the kinetic, rapid-fire barrage of disjointed visuals is a refreshing change of pace from the common narrative-driven film. I like the rest of Dog Star Man better than this prelude, but it's a great way to launch the series.

Brakhage once again de-constructs film right down to its very base core, but this seems to be a precise, yet expansive culmination of the haphazardly edited, stream-of-conscious, silent filmic universe he has created (which has likely seeped its way to influence a large portion of music videos and other short films). Works brilliantly as a precursor to the Dog Star Man parts (as each part works on its own), but this whole piece works effectively as a 75 minute film.

25 minutes of random images some blurry some extreme closeups and a lot of stuff I couldn't even begin to decipher. It wasn't bad but I can't really say I found any enjoyment in it, it all seemed rather random and pointless and too abstract for my tastes.