The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes

I was somewhat disappointed by this film because I expected to see a full autopsy being performed from start to finish. In his interview, Brakhage said that he chose not to use any weird effects with the material he shot because one doesn't need metaphor for something so primal. Yet his way of shooting and editing his footage made me feel like there was a great deal of manipulation involved. This was not an objective look at the human body. What we got was a mishmash of body parts being filmed so close up, and shot and edited with so much motion, one can barely tell what one is looking at. Although I'd seen somewhat similar stuff in "The Re-Animator", I did find the shots of brain autopsies fascinating, especially the way that one's scalp skin is peeled back so much that it covers the entire face, making us look truly alien (one imagines that H.R. Giger saw a few autopsies before creating his aliens). Still, very few shots of the brain, and we see no shots of them being dissected. I consider the human brain to be the most fascinating thing in the universe so I was disappointed. I also resented the shots early in the film of victims who obviously died by violent means. I suppose some viewers like the exterior shots of the autopsies because it makes them try to guess who these people were and how they came to such grisly deaths. But that to me is kind of like the junk one can see in those Mondo Cane type movies. It's sensationalist and exploitive and completely ruins one's sense of objectivity. I preferred the actual shots of the autopsies that simply allowed one to see the glorious pulp that meticulously keeps us functioning every hour of every day. The film excels brilliantly at that level though as I said, there was not any cognitive approach to displaying the organs. One can interpret Brakhage's films in any way they see fit, but I'm guessing that either he wanted to create an impressionist view of life through its ultimate mortality, or he is just another hack who prefers exploitation and sensationalism over reality. I appreciated the film for what it did show, but in my opinion, the inside of us human beings is fascinating enough without dancing lenses and choppy editing obscuring it. Someone should have told Brakhage he can't top God.

Perhaps I'm misattributing my own scientific, atheistic tendencies, but I've found that many of Stan Brakhage's early films seem to argue for Man as an animal, an organic vessel with primitive urges. 'Window Water Baby Moving (1959)' documented the act of parturition in unflinching detail, depicting childbirth, not as the "miracle" suggested in more romantic sources, but as a perfectly natural, albeit remarkable, mammalian event. 'Thigh Line Lyre Triangular (1961)' did something similar, but this time clouded by the subjectivity of human perception. 'Mothlight (1963)' likened humans to moths, attracted to the flickering lights of a cinema screen as an insect is to a lightbulb. No film achieves this aim more effectively than the blunt, cheerless silence of 'The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes (1971).'

The film's title is a literal translation of the Greek word from which "autopsy" is derived. The 32-minute film was photographed at the Allegheny Coroner's Office in Pittsburgh, and documents the routine dissection of cadavers. This isn't for the faint-hearted. Brakhage often zooms in for shaky, unclear close- ups of the patients' bodily organs, removing the viewer's customary frame of reference, and leaving abstract images that are unsettlingly disconnected from our everyday experience. Skin is peeled back from the anonymous faces, organs are removed. The camera occasionally lingers on the patients' genitalia. In life, these were organs of sexual attraction, upon which so much importance was placed; now we see that they are merely insignificant pieces of flesh. Only death, it seems, can bring such things into perspective.

As a zoology student, I've dissected frogs, pigeons, rats. The internal layout of a rat isn't all that different from that of a human (except, most noticeably, for the testicond gonads). At the end of the autopsy procedure, we are left with an empty vessel. Everything that makes us human – emotion, intelligence, culture – is regulated by the brain, and, once that dies, we're just another conglomeration of organic molecules. Indeed, were we ever anything else? 'The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes' was not an easy nor enjoyable film to watch, but it did force me to see the true state of the human condition: that we're animals, nothing more, and that ultimately we're all destined for the operating table.

The titles comes from the literal translation for the Greek word 'Autopsy". And that's exactly what this film is . 32 minutes of intense, hand-held photographing of several autopsies in extremely explicit detail.

While the film is, by nature, shocking, and sometimes hard to watch, it's far from exploitational or sensationalistic. It invites us to meditate on life, death, the body, what miracles we all are, how fragile we all are, how alone we all are in the end, and yet how alike we all are. What is a human? What were these people like in life? Are all we are really just the blobby masses of brain we see being removed, leaving only empty skull cavities? Why is the film stomach turning? Why is it so hard to look at what is inside us all? Brakhage raises all these questions, and they are valuable and unsettling to consider.

That said, for me, the film could have been shorter. It started to feel repetitive, which I'm sure was part of the intent (watching ourselves become inured to images that only minutes earlier seemed deeply disturbing), but there was a point near the end where I started to feel I had gotten what I was going to already, including that last idea.

This 30 minute documentary on three human autopsies is one of the most disturbing yet intruiging things that I have ever seen on film. If you can imagine it, they show it. Everything but the corpses faces are shown. But I am willing to bet that if Brakhage was allowed to show the faces he would have. This movie delves into the idea of human curiosity and vision like never done before. A thinker.

Before I begin this review I must mention that this film is absolutely not for the faint of heart.

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'The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes' was directed by experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage - arguably one of the most creative and original filmmakers of all time.

This film consists entirely of footage of real life autopsies being performed and as a result is extremely graphic, but is nevertheless an interesting look at the human body and how autopsies are performed.

I should also note that the film is completely silent, which I feel only adds to the uneasy feeling while watching.

Overall, I recommend this to anyone interested in this subject matter or film in general who can stomach 31 minutes of corpses having autopsies performed on them.

7/10