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.

No plot, no story, no tension, no conflict, no irony, no dialog, often out of focus, jittery and nearly 5 hours long. All this and it is one of the greatest documentaries I have ever seen. A stunningly positive and beautiful film that is just about the happiness and joy of family, New York City, country getaways and filming. This is such a compelling work, it did not even seem that long. This is the work of a man at peace with his own happiness. We should all be so lucky.

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.

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.