The Wold Shadow

'The Wold Shadow (1972)' reminded me of the sort of dreams that I always find myself having. There's usually somebody chasing me, and, try as I might, I can never run any faster than I already am. But the important point is that I can never see who is actually pursuing me. I turn, I squint, I focus as closely as I can on the moving figure… but I can never discern anything except for a vague outline. It's always frustrating, and I wake up wishing my mind wasn't plagued by such infuriatingly-inconclusive dreams. This three-minute film from Stan Brakhage certainly isn't his most exciting effort, but, in it, I noticed elements of my own dreams. An ordinary forest scene is captured through a sheet of painted glass, which acts as a half-transparent barrier that blurs and mysticises the trees' outlines. As much as I watched, squinted and focused, I could never clearly discern the image – except for a single frame, which was like turning from Plato's cave wall to recognise true reality.

To shoot 'The Wold Shadow,' Brakhage travelled to the forest for a full day. He placed a piece of glass between the camera and the trees, and shot a single frame at a time, between which he would paint on the separating glass. The result is a forest scene strangely disconnected from reality; for much of the film, the images appear to have been animated rather than captured from real-life. But it's also exasperating. Just as the viewer is beginning to discern something recognisable, Brakhage blankets the screen in darkness again, and we're left unsure of what we've just seen, or, indeed, wondering if we even saw anything at all. He denies us any satisfaction or closure, and I was left feeling unfulfilled. It's my "being chased" dream all over again – must I really be tormented by that which I'm not allowed to see? That, I suppose, is the quandary faced by all philosophers; Brakhage, through cinema, did his own fair share of philosophising.

Brakhage makes us open our eyes to colors and textures that we don't do right away. The camera and how the iris opens and closes, the light that is exposed on the film itself, if the key ingredient. I just wish it had been a minute longer; not too much so, only in that one could have the sensation of experiencing more of the variations on the bark. It's pretty but I don't understand the God of the Forest part as Brakhage has in his notes on the DVD. If anything I'm reminded of Twin Peaks minus the music - which means it's not as effective as if it had it - and that brings to mind dreams and seeing things in such a way that is meant precisely to not be completely realistic but half- remembered, shaken into the consciousness like if one is slowly waking up or in that half-dream-half-awake state.

The Wold Shadow is a series of shots taken with a still camera through a glass with various levels of paint on it. The camera is aimed at a fairly normal section of forest. As different frames have different amounts of light due to the position of the sun and clouds and different amounts of paint the same area looks different from one frame to the next. There's one spot that seems to remain dark constantly. Naturally the viewer begins to wonder what this area could be. Suddenly, the image changes completely and the entire frame resembles deep space; the last few seconds of the film reminded me of some of the more fantastic shots taken by the Hubble Telescope. The implication is that there's an entire world that always lurks just out of sight; a world that is both is vast and unimaginable. To me this works as a sort of Lovecraftian horror though I gather my interpretation isn't the normal one. This is an amazing short, one of Brakhage's best.

I suppose every film student in the world for the past 40, perhaps 50 years has had to endure Brakhage, sitting through whatever of his filmed essays the professor thinks he can speak to.

So, as a matter of simply measuring success, he has achieved.

Its an odd thing, how films get leverage. "1984" (in all versions) as a film will have a life for generations not because it is a good film, or book, but because it fills a market need for packaged insights of a clean and trivial enough nature to fit industrialized education.

Theatrical success often hinges on one hook or another, and it is worthwhile knowing what works if for no other reason than realizing how you are being manipulated. It's usually about narrative in some form.

In Brakhage's case, the narrative is external to the actual film, instead in his essays. These may not directly be exposed to a student, instead filtered through the saliva of the teacher only slightly modified. Its an odd phenomenon, that art is supposed to be deep, boundless, challenging and lifealtering, but ideas about art must be the opposite: succinct, closed, comprehensible, easily conveyed. Even that observation is one of the acceptable ones! So we have so-called "experimental" films, made as small lessons and sailed into a huge, fawning audience of (mostly) lazy academics.

I could have picked any of his films for this observation: there are a few hundred and now a couple dozen on a Criterion DVD. I chose this because it is one of his most Pollack-like. I must admit that when I see these -- the ones that have no narrative pretension -- I think of them as dynamic paintings, as interesting experiences to prompt some thinking about optic impression.

They are filmed, but not film for me. They are paintings, just as almost all of Gaudi's work is sculpture rather than architecture. A real film is architectural, you enter it and live in it, interacting with it in as many ways as you have grown tendrils. A painting is something you experience from a distance, the fog of space, separation being part of the experience.

Brakhage cannot understand what movies are all about. Never could, never did -- so "study" of these may give you some insight into color and rhythm, but not what makes cinema the art that can destroy.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.