Dog Star Man: Part I

This 5-part montage is clearly a technical masterpiece, but like most surreal art pieces, it is dangerous to conceptualize with any confidence. It is highly recommended that that viewer experience all five parrts as they are certainly related. Although I am ignorant of the technical aspects of filmmaking, this film surely is mandatory viewing for film students since it appears to use every trick in the book for imagery-based, fast-cut filmmaking. Conceptually (as one viewer's take on the film), the film is about a young male in a cold, snowy alpine-like setting and his dog as they work their way along through the cold, harsh, dangerous elements. We experience what hapens in the mind and body of this individual during the ordeal, including scenes of the outdoors, biomedical footage of the inner workings of the body's tissue and organs, interactions between this man and a woman's body, his dog, celestial shots, the birth and first year of a new born baby. All of this is put together with great artistic talent (I was often reminded of work by Paranjanov, Tartovsky and Greenaway but I am not sure that any connection is warranted anywhere except in my own reaction) and depicts one man's fast-paced struggle with all of these experiences. The full-length feature is long and taxes one's attention, but the journey is worth it for those willing to take such an adventure.

Like Wavelength, nothing happens. Skip this movie! The "best" part is the random topless woman. Oh, and there's a mountain climber. Well that's it. Don't see this movie? Have you seen....any other movie? Can you name one? Go see that instead!

This is not a "movie" in any hollywood-sense.

Close your eyes, watch as the patterns emerge from the darkness, slip in a few memory stills from the movie of your life, make the white noise as silent as possible in your cranium (no sound in this movie at all, unless your vcr makes a hissing noise), take this seemingly unreal experience and transpose it to film, scratch the film with forks, burn it with lighters, paint on the film, crinkle it, twist it, swallow it whole the way the tibetans swallow strips of cloth to clean their intestines, wash it, reel it and see the movie of your dreams.

"great" isn't good enough. This film goes off the scale, as we mere humans have no method of measuring the value of such an experience. If I had 30 thumbs they would all be up. If I had to choose from 1 to five stars, I would have to obliterate the stars, turn them into black holes, wait til a few more stars gather round and post them all right here for the world to see::::::::>

You may be bored silly or you may be mesmerised. You might find yourself slipping into a catatonic state. You might glance away from the screen for a moment, but you'd be advised not too. Stan Brakhage's remarkable mythopoetic epic brought back a rush of 8mm memories for me from my childhood. There are incredible images of beauty and there are bizarre images that will have you rewinding the tape to ask yourself if you just saw what you thought you saw. (You did.) Highest recommendation!

If anyone tells you that this movie is boring, you won't enjoy it, you don't get it, then this person doesn't know the first thing about film. For a film to be put in the National Congress Library, and claimed as "The most important film ever made", hands down, you must be missing something.

Dog Star Man, as a whole, is the most amazing experience you could ever sit through. If sitting through "Tears of the Sun" with Bruce Willis was "the best movie ever", then you have never traveled to the avant-garde world of cinema. I would have to say that you should look at "Dog Star Man" and then "Mothlight" if you need to see a good movie. The film itself holds a story in each frame. Seriously, all would love this film. If you have something negative againest this film, please take into consideration what it takes to put something like this together.

Light, picture, sounds. Brakhage is more than a filmmaker.

RIP: SB 1933-2003