Night Music

One can't critique a Stan Brakhage work the way one does an ordinary film. I'm not entirely convinced that the director had anything specific in mind when he created 'Night Music (1986),' but, whatever he was going for, it was something subliminal. Though running for a mere thirty seconds (making this, I believe, the shortest film I've ever seen), the eye is greeted with dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of individual hand-painted images, each shimmering from the frame like searing patches of napalm. What Brakhage is showing us is unclear, but probably irrelevant – more important is what we actually see. Me? I saw the vastness of outer space, glittering with blazing nebulae of dust and flame. I saw a frantic oceanic battle, with ships floundering in the waves. I saw a village disappear in an explosion of fire. Then I watched 'Night Music' again, and again, and saw something different every time. The human brain is a brilliant if peculiar interpretor of visual information, and Brakhage taps into the mind's inherent subjectivity. With this goal in mind, he produced a series of silent hand-painted short films, the most impressive of which is 'The Dante Quartet (1987),' a six-minute adaptation of Dante's "The Divine Comedy."

Gone in less than a minute this may be literal film painter Stan Brakhage's most accessible work post 70s. Over in no time, it is a lush visual bombardment of deep dark abstracts imploding before your eyes with none of the washed out interludes found in the overlong preludes that followed. A Barnum moment for Stan as he reels himself in with this creation that begs for more than one viewing.

"Night Music" by avant garde legend Stan Brakhage checks in at 30 seconds! It will probably take me considerably longer to write this review. Assuredly, anyone reading this will probably know more about Brakhage than me- though I have seen several of his 'films.' I must say I did not expect color schemes to jump at me at a blistering rate. I actually watched this in slow-mo and it revealed a lot more to me. At one point, I thought I saw what looked like a jazz musician- but, hey it was probably just my imagination! Well, I must also give credit to Brakhage for the fact that I am actually not giving anything away! Now, it may sound like I don't like "Night Music" but in fact I really do. Like all Brakhage works, it is highly original and does allow one to view film from a pure subconsious aspect which not a bad thing. But, as to what this is all about. Well, I'm sure someone could explain it to me, but that would assuredly take more than 30 seconds. This comes in a compilation collection of his works. 7/10

(This is a collective review for the following shorts: Night Music (1986), Autumnal (1993), Study in Color and Black and White (1993), Three Homerics (1993), Ephemeral Solidarity (1993), The Harrowing (1993), Tryst Haunt (1993), Stellar (1993), Black Ice (1994), The Chartres Series (1994), Naughts (1994))

After one exercise in the mid 80s (Night Music), Stan Brakhage has made a series of short "hand-painted films" in the early 90s. In those films, the colorful paintings, which resemble the Abstract Expressionism from the 50s, flash like fireworks, fade in and fade out, overlay, and interact with each other, in complete silence. By watching the pieces sequentially, the viewers will be dazzled by their compelling and persistent optical effects.

While all pieces look similar with each other in a larger scale, the details bear differences: the colors mainly used, the patterns of the colors' movements, the ways the patterns are layered, the length of the patterns and the intervals, the additional materials, and so on. Among them, Autumnal's occasional insertions of color mattes yield a clear contrast to the main ingredient--in fact, by the contrast, the piece has the viewers pay attention to the beauty of the mattes, which they normally can't recognize.