Song of Avignon

Independent film maker Jonas Mekas eats a croissant and plays the accordion while summoning Velvet Underground drummer back from the dead to recite depressing dirge in another of his film Songs of dissonant melody. Slightly more accessible than some of his other shorts, the major blame this time around is awarded to narrator Angus MacLise monotoning in a deep state despair and self pity that threatens to bury the short 60 seconds in. Once rid of his whining you are able to concentrate on the montage in which Mekas's pedestrian squeezebox work actually brings a poignancy to the picture.

"I never let you down world, but you did lousy things to me."

Mekas decodes the fuzzy, undefinable static that transmits throughout the twisted and tightly wrapped cocoon of his consciousness, and in doing so creates a truly definite, yet universal examination of the despair of human life. His monotonous musings perpetuate throughout, haunting the images they overlay. Lost and confounded, much like the rest of us (only perhaps feeling this more strongly), Mekas translates his cosmic dissonance onto strips of celluloid in an attempt to climb out of, as he puts it, the Dantian forrest, so that he can find a reason for being. His intentions are admirable, and his output is much needed in the world.