Desistfilm

Stan Brakhage is best known for experimenting with the film medium itself--painting on film, gluing moth wings onto film, and other unusual cinematic techniques. Though he made Desist Film the old-fashioned way, with actors performing in front of a camera, it's just as inscrutable and bizarre as his other experimentations.

I don't remember everything that happens in the film, but it focuses on a group of burned out teenagers who entertain themselves in various ways (one of them practices lighting five matches at once, and another tries to build a structure out of various books). Like any good avant-garde film, the on-screen action can't really be understood as any kind of logical narrative. What matters is the feelings and moods and ideas evoked by the film, and Desist Film is a strangely unnerving, creepy movie experience. Though some of the editing is a bit too disorienting for its own good in my opinion, I don't think I'll ever forget the movie's very last shot. Even in a film where nothing makes sense, that last image is unspeakably chilling.

Highly recommended if you ever get the chance to see it (I saw it in a film class at the University of Colorado in Boulder).

I'm guessing Desistfilm is one of the most narrative Brakhage films. It starts off with a few people sitting around, not doing much of anything. The camera mostly stays away from the people's faces: at the start it's more important to see what they are doing than how they feel about it. There's a young man playing a mandolin, a woman smoking, and another guy reading a book. Two other young men are having a conversation. A new arrival distracts everyone, the camera moves wildly as the characters begin to move more quickly, alcohol is poured. Suddenly they begin to dance in a ring, then return to their earlier roles. Instead of continuing their banal tasks they now begin doing unusual things such as stacking books and lighting fires. Everyone looks on as one of the males and the girl dance. Their motions become unbridled, the rapid camera movements reflect the characters' frantic actions. The already jarring music adds to the unsettling atmosphere as the characters revelry becomes more and more frantic. The couple is seen again with an odd distortion; the others voyeuristically leer at them and it becomes clear that the viewer is being shown the scene through the twisted viewpoint of the newly demented.

The editing and camera movements create an unsettling atmosphere as the characters in Desistfilm rapidly transform from dull, normal people to deranged savages, apparently due to a bit of drink. Desistfilm is simply a wild, Bacchanalian revel caught on film; it's extremely unsettling, probably because it seems to take so little to cause normal seeming people to devolve into fiends.

There is a lot of energy to Desistfilm, literal naval-gazing (at one point a guy is picking his belly button), dancing, cavorting, close ups of boobs under non-cleavage-y closes, perverts leering through windows, the sound at first of a fly and then things like music horns spliced together with car horns.

It's a symphony of audio chaos with what is actually, considering other films Brakhage would make after this, somewhat coherent visually speaking. It's like a frenetic 7 minute punk rock song - remember how the Ramones's early songs were about sitting around with nothing to do and/or chainsaws? - only these are Beatniks, who were sometimes crazier, and it has that feel of mania that comes with young people drinking and maybe high on something we cant understand.

But at the same time there's no sexual component (past boobs and leering peeping toms) like in Kenneth Anger. It's messy, but it's not a bad place to start if you are just discovering this director exists (I imagine it being first on the Criterion Collection compilation isnt random). This is plotless anarchic delights of youth.

It is atmospheric, creepy, weird, funny, and it's only 7 minutes! I'd definitely recommend it to fans of experimental filmmaking, or anybody interested in filmmaking. Even if you don't like it, you still wouldn't have wasted all too much of your time.

Yes, it has a pretty low user rating, and I can understand if you dislike the film. It is VERY weird and nonsensical and confusing, but I, personally, enjoyed it, and it makes me want to watch even more Brakhage films.

The main problem about "Desistfilm" is that there isn't much to say about it. I can't say it was a flawless, cinematic masterpiece, because it just wasn't good enough for that. I could phrase it differently, by saying that it was missing something, but it wasn't aiming for anything that high, it is just a short, experimental piece. Not Brakhage's best, but still a great short film.

Stan Brakhage's short film, DESISTFILM is good because it makes the audience feel warped without giving us anything in particular to feel warped about. It is all in the sound design. The image of what appears to be people doing whatever they can to defeat boredom. The film is only seven minutes long, but this is plenty of time for the viewer to be disturbed. The music is creepy and sounds unearthly, though very zany in a strange way. Why does this music bug the senses so much? Why do the images seem so cryptic an unnatural, yet normal? This film needs to be watched more than once. More than twice even. The speed of the film feels frantic, yet the interaction between different characters seem so grungy and unreal. This film is simply a series of images of people defeating boredom. and while there may be more to it than a viewer may garter, it is still a very unforgettable experience.

(I watched this film as part of the DVD short film collection of Stan Brakhage entitled, BY BRAKHAGE: AN ANTHOLOGY.)