I... Dreaming

Extremely autobiographical piece made during an intensely depressive period for the filmmaker after his divorce from Jane, his first wife, and separation from his five children. Brakhage calls it "a true, narrative, dramatic psychodrama". The film's background music is a piece which is a collage of brief phrases from various Stephen Foster songs whose common theme is loss. Brakhage scratches individual words from these songs on the film at intervals, and the shaky letters dance uncertainly across the frame. The primary visual theme is of the 55-year-old filmmaker himself brooding in a lonely apartment, sitting on the floor leaning against a wall, repeatedly rising naked from his bed and falling back. This is intercut with footage made years earlier, in the 70s, when his children were much smaller, as they played happily in the home they once shared. Even at his very lowest point, Brakhage continued to turn his life into art.

I've seen four Stan Brakhage films to date, and the two that I've liked most are those that seem very personal to the director: 'Window Water Baby Moving (1959),' a documentation of the birth of his first daughter, and 'I… Dreaming (1988),' which was produced in the wake of his divorce from Jane Brakhage, his wife of thirty years. The latter lacks any clear narrative thread, as was Brakhage's style, but is nevertheless quite successful in evoking a sense of loneliness and silent longing. The director himself appears in the film, though in the first half he is photographed mainly as a shadow on the wall, his face typically hidden just off-screen. Perhaps this is how Brakhage was feeling at the time, having been separated from his children; a shadow of his former self. Images of his restless but lethargic figure are intercut with home video of his children – Rarc, Neowyn, Bearthm – apparently filmed in the 1970s when they were playful youngsters.

Unlike all the Brakhage films I've seen so far, 'I… Dreaming' isn't silent, instead featuring a soundtrack of Stephen Foster songs, compiled by Joel Haertling. Appropriate music can add ample emotion to any film, but Brakhage deliberately dilutes the pathos by periodically "skipping" from one tune to the next, best described as the audio equivalent of a French New Wave jump-cut. This frequent sensory disruption dislocates the flow of the montage, re-enforcing the main character's (and thus the director's) unshakable state of restlessness and discomfort. Brakhage scratches select lyrics from the soundtrack directly onto the film, the most prominent of which is the line "see the dark void," perhaps casting an eye towards his inevitable death. Mortality appears to be an important theme in the film, with Brakhage contrasting his own sluggish movements with the hyperactivity of the children, accentuated using time-lapse photography. In a way, the film is an addendum to 'Window Water Baby Moving,' when a parent must say goodbye, rather than hello, to their progeny.

After a little while, it seemed that watching the visually stunning films of Stan Brakhage was going to start getting ridiculously repetitive, but Brakhage seems to have proved me wrong! It's great to see variety in his work, since, while his traditional style is unique and beautiful, you can only use the same tricks so many times over the course of a 300 movie long career!

Anyway, "I...Dreaming" is among Brakhage's most mysterious, weird, and indescribably beautiful films. Here, he not only experiments with visuals (in which he now scratches words over actual footage rather than just film, and uses time lapse photography), but also with sound. Brakhage is known for having made many films that are just pure silence, no music, no dialogue, no AUDIO. But, here, he plays with the idea of audio, reversing and chopping up music to a point of both annoyance and beauty.

This feels sinister. And pretty. And captures an isolation and loneliness; on the DVD he confirms he was at a low point in his life when he made this. Captivating imagery how he uses text over the screen (often he just uses the shaking and glittering text at the beginning and end), and the intercutting with the kids makes for a curious choice. Maybe Brakhage just suffered from garden-variety clinical depression, and the kids being there is not going to help save him or bring him out from his toe-picking and naked wanderings around his confinement. This is beautiful and scary all at once.