As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty

I'm personaly someone who can't stand "experimental" art. I don't think that being incomprehensible or 10 hours long makes a movie good. Looking at Mekas, it might seem like he's one of those pretentious "experimental" filmmakers who thinks that just filming anything for nearly 5 hours will fool smug film-buffs. But thankfully he isn't anything like that.

Even though I'm an inpatient and strict movie watcher, I can't say that the 5 hours of this film feel long. I admittedly skipped some parts but none of it feels unnecessary or boring. The big provocation of Mekas (in out time) is - tellingly - that he does not only portrait family life as happy and funny but he is casually showing some utopia of normality and family almost opposed to modern day politicized pathological mental fights against windmills and sick nihilist post-modern meta-jokes.

Most of the film consists of angelic blonde children crawling, stumbling, dancing and jumping through the video in the forest or on the lake. Much of it is Mekas and his wife with their kids and relatives just hanging around, having a good time, playing cards or eating while you can hear folkloristic music or some classics in the background if Mekas isn't explaining things from the off or talking to himself in this sort of memory diary.

There are just some dissonant parts, for instance when he films some hippie-girls and zooms to their butts, followed by some other hysterical hippie-girls protesting for abortions (in a film that mostly depicts happy families with beautiful children).

When I give the film a 7/10, it's actually a positive/high rating for me. This is obviously not perfect and has no intention of being that but it's more beautiful and has more "soul" to it (in a metaphorical way) than most mainstream movies anywhere from the beginning of films to this day.