Bodysong

I had been really psyched in expectation of seeing this film, but the end experience has left me rather flat. The two major issues of contention I have concern the structure and the much-hyped soundtrack. Although billed as a journey from birth to death the film actually continues past death into a bizarre and ultimately pointless montage of random and arbitrarily selected human activities. Ending the film at death would have been appropriate both in terms of content and time.

My other concern is the soundtrack, which is used to make judgements on what we see, in an otherwise silent film. However this is done inappropriately so that 'womb-time' is depicted in an anti-abortionist almost sacred manner and sex as both crazed and frenzied, whilst death camps are merely romanticised by elevator music! The net result is to depict sex as more unsavoury than the Holocaust! Either let us make up our own minds or treat all human activity with the same contempt.

BODYSONG is a must-see emotional roller-coaster build up out of

clips of found footage from all periods of film-making from all over

the world. A cinematic experience in the true sense of the word, using

images and music (a fantastic diverse film score from Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood) to speak to the audience on a gut

and heart level. In a time where the individual is paramount this

intelligent film dares to push you to think about what it means to be

human.

At first the film follows the cycle of life, starting with conception, a

cascade of births, growing up, mating rituals and sex, followed by

violence, destruction, old age, illness and death. Because there is

no voice-over used, the images are incredibly strong. There is no

way to escape the visual, you cannot box it with knowledge and

therefore the less pleasant sides of humanity are straight in your

face. We are all animals driven by procreation and lust for power,

moving in herds and I watching this, am one of them. I think I am

special, but I am not.

Fortunately director Simon Pummell then shows us the redemptive side of humanity: the search for meaning. Through religion and ritual, art, dreams, beliefs and solidarity.

Particularly interesting is the introduction of speech very late in the

film, adding cinematic ally as a positive, the discerning factors

between animal and human: voice and reason.

The film ends upbeat, pulling out into space, leaving the human

species on their planet, with all their smallness and bigness

ticking over, generation after generation.

The Bodysong website delivers finally something very few film

websites do: a meaningful experience in itself and not just a

promotional tool. The website has all the clips used in the film and

it is on the website you can find out what, when and by whom. The

choice for mostly amateur non-fiction footage makes absolute

sense to me as this film speaks about real people. That the

choice is also highly personal (and anyone else making this film

would choose different clips) echo's and underlines the theme of

the film: we are all the same, but different.

'Bodysong' is a most unusual film, a collection of moving images of the human body set to music. The film demonstrates all stages of life, and includes some very explicit sexual content. In a loose way, it reminded me of Richard Linklater's film 'Slacker', in that one image follows another with some linkage, but no overall narrative in the classical sense. It's very artfully done, and almost every fragment is visually striking; but for those of us who think in words, it's just a set of pictures, distinctive but slightly lacking in purpose beyond a series of things to look at. In its own way, it's very good; but not quite my thing.

With all due respect to the person who wrote the first review saying the footage was 'second rate', I think he misses the point. The reason why a lot of the clips aren't well shot or famous is because they are shot by amateurs about amateurs - this is a film about real life, and about a common humanity. Incidentally, there are shots of astronauts and atom bombs, and also some very famous clips, such as the clip from the old film 'the kiss' and the infamous shooting of a Vietnamese man.

The giving birth part of the film was for me rather painful to watch, which surprised me because, having seen Irreversible the week before, I didn't think anything could shock me. Many of the clips were funny, and others moving, but the film was flawed for a number of reasons. Primarily, I was confused by the order in which he tackled the various themes, which instead of going chronologically from birth to death exploring themes in-between, went from birth to death to rebirth, religion, marriage etc.. Also, having spent about 20mins on childhood and the teenage years, he spent no time on the elderly, unless you count the 'death' part.

I also felt that the plinky-plonky music didn't really help much, particularly during the 'sex' sequence. Why is there freaky jazz music going on over the sex part? Why is sex portrayed as some strange, subversive, aggressive part of life? I'll never understand why in 'serious' films hardcore sex attracts aggressive jazz music, when if you watch a hardcore porn movie it always has soft jazz music.

Although there were many parts of the film I enjoyed, it didn't have the coherence or forward thinking approach of similar films such as Koyaanisqatsi.

P.S I don't know why people would walk out of a film like this - it was marked '18' in the UK, so some of the scenes were expected, and all the reviews I read for it clearly stated that it was a series of clips put to music. Besides, it's not that long.

Opening with footage of sperm fertilising an egg, this film begins a montage of archive footage from different places and times that encompasses the act of birth, growing up, teenage experience, sex, violence, war, spirituality, creativity and death. Having said that it is probably unfair of me to note that it is not wholly successful because when your aim is to sum up the human condition in less than 90 minutes then even attempting it is worthy of credit.

Pummell is credited as writer and director but a massive chunk of credit belongs to those who pulled together this mass of archive footage from all over the world and all over the last century. Pummell groups it together well to establish themes that generally do flow well together to create a general impression of what it is to be alive in overall terms of experience (ie not specific of individuals as such). In doing this the film slightly falters when some clips are dull and others are fascinating but this comes with the territory and the overriding impression is one of being carried along. It is an experimental sort of film and as such will not easily win a mass audience but it does deserve to be seen by many more people than its 150 odd votes on this site suggests have seen it.

Pummell benefits from the skill of those that provide him with his images and although he is "director" it is fair to say that this role is not as it would normally be considered as all of the material has been directed and filmed by others. These others are uncredited as far as I can see but they have captured a great range of footage, some good, others stunning. El-P has called it when he said that this is basically what you need to sit ET down in front of to give him an idea of what being human is. The soundtrack is haunting and well put together to mostly compliment the footage; my favourite being the jazz building to (literally) a climax during the section that depicts the passion and joy of sex.

Overall then a fascinating film that aims for an impossible goal but does a very good job of getting surprisingly close to achieving it. The footage is good and is well used by Pummell to develop themes and threads that combine to sum up the human experience. It is hard to put into words but it is not at all as patronising or arty as that sounds because it is surprisingly accessible and impacting (although you should be prepared for images of graphic sex, violence and births).