As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty

At 288 minutes, this nearly 5 hour epic is a challenge. But its rewards are well worth the effort. Jonas Mekas has managed to produce a film that forces its viewer to truly understand the beauty and majesty that is life.

Highly recommended, you will be a better person for seeing it.

I'm personaly someone who can't stand "experimental" art. I don't think that being incomprehensible or 10 hours long makes a movie good. Looking at Mekas, it might seem like he's one of those pretentious "experimental" filmmakers who thinks that just filming anything for nearly 5 hours will fool smug film-buffs. But thankfully he isn't anything like that.

Even though I'm an inpatient and strict movie watcher, I can't say that the 5 hours of this film feel long. I admittedly skipped some parts but none of it feels unnecessary or boring. The big provocation of Mekas (in out time) is - tellingly - that he does not only portrait family life as happy and funny but he is casually showing some utopia of normality and family almost opposed to modern day politicized pathological mental fights against windmills and sick nihilist post-modern meta-jokes.

Most of the film consists of angelic blonde children crawling, stumbling, dancing and jumping through the video in the forest or on the lake. Much of it is Mekas and his wife with their kids and relatives just hanging around, having a good time, playing cards or eating while you can hear folkloristic music or some classics in the background if Mekas isn't explaining things from the off or talking to himself in this sort of memory diary.

There are just some dissonant parts, for instance when he films some hippie-girls and zooms to their butts, followed by some other hysterical hippie-girls protesting for abortions (in a film that mostly depicts happy families with beautiful children).

When I give the film a 7/10, it's actually a positive/high rating for me. This is obviously not perfect and has no intention of being that but it's more beautiful and has more "soul" to it (in a metaphorical way) than most mainstream movies anywhere from the beginning of films to this day.

I do not normally write reviews, but after watching this film, I had the urge to do it. I am astonished by the praise that this movie receives. A four hours and a half movie about nothing but disconnected images of the life of the filmmaker. On paper, the concept of the project is not that unappealing to me, but its lazy and carefree approach makes it almost unbearable to watch. Mekas himself addresses the fact that there is no order in the movie, that he just organized the tapes and images randomly, without any sequence and with no intention to give it a plot or even meaning. His voice narration also feels lazy. Mekas seems to improvise and share his thoughts arbitrarily, trying to sound poetic. His honesty can be heartwarming sometimes, but there are many other times in which he just sounds childish or poetically pretentious because of this lack of preparation. This, in addition to the cheap field recordings and the home made piano and accordion tracks, only drag the film and make me feel that I am watching an absolute amateur experiment.

I understand that the film is about life and that its random nature and sequences of disconnected images are meant to represent how memories work; that Mekas wants to trigger the viewers into reflecting on their own life and memories. But I don't think that in order to achieve this purpose one can purely rely on chance and improvisation. Its loose structure and casual attitude ruin it for me.

As an exercise in style and aesthetics, the film has its charm. I like how some images melt into others and the dreamlike quality they have. There were memories and passages of experiences I could even relate to. But most of the time, I was feeling that these images were so far from me and my life I could not be invested in anything that I was watching. These were the personal images of somebody else's life, someone I had no relationship with at all. I guess some people are able to feel the movie, and feel invested in the personal memories that Mekas shares, but I could not.

Last thing I want to say, is that I do not think that "nothingness" is a negative concept when it comes to cinema. There are plenty of movies where "nothingness" plays an important role that deserve their praise and that, in my opinion, should be regarded as better than Mekas' film. Some examples are Koyaanisqatsi, The Colour of Pomegranates, El ángel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel), Stranger Than Paradise, A torinói ló (The Turin Horse), or Un homme qui dort (The Man Who Sleeps). (I just want to clarify that in these films the idea of "nothingness", lack of meaning or lack of plot play an essential role, not that they are about nothing).

"As I Was Moving..." looks and feels like a cheap and random experiment, different and interesting in theory, but overwhelming and lazy throughout its extreme length. I assume its idiosyncratic style has helped establishing this as an ultimate cult film, and I can see that. But its shiftless approach and lack of a purpose make it impossible for me to enjoy.

The concept of the movie works, the image are sometimes mesmerizing and the comments interesting and funny. When the right combination of music and shots come together it is very nice.

That said it could have been shorter, some parts are quite repetitive, there's like 5 "ecstasy of summer in NYC", several shots of winters that are very similar, etc. And while the shaky, unfocused shots have their charm, they can become tedious. Jonas Mekas does tell you at some point he's not a film maker, but that's a sometimes a bit too apparent in the work itself.

That said it's really good material if you want to zone out, you can watch this with fleeting attention and not miss much of the experience.

When i stumbled upon this film i thought that it is a wonderful idea and i was really excited to watch it. I understand that a certain rawness can be part of an artwork, but if you make a film and you want the recipient to stay with you for over 4 hours, i think it s also important to make it somewhat watchable. Sadly the shaky camera work and the way it is edited does not work for me. The fast cuts, the low frame rate and the changes in tempo make it very hard to get in to the mood of the moment. He seems to have a had a very nice life and i would have loved to participate in it for a bit longer, but i had to drop out after 30 minutes or so.