Eye Myth

Eye Myth (1967)

*** (out of 4)

This was my second film from the director and it turned out to be just as strange as the first. This film runs a very short eight seconds and apparently was meant to show us things that the eye catches and thinks is one thing but turns out to be something else. You wouldn't think too much could be done in such a short running time but the film works for what it is. I'm not exactly sure what it is but I suppose that was the whole point. There's never any clues, messages or hints at what we're seeing and at the end of the film it's up to the viewer to make up his or her own mind.

'Eye Myth (1967),' with an epic running time of nine seconds, took less time to watch than it did to write this sentence. Still, it is a worthy Brakhage effort. I really enjoyed 'The Dante Quartet (1987)' because it revealed the fallacy of human vision; that is, what we see is not necessarily what we get. Inside the frenzied flicker of colours and scratches, a viewer might discern objects and faces that never existed, such is the imaginative, and often self-deluding, power of the human senses. 'Eye Myth' works on a similar visceral sort of level. Watching the film through at normal speed, the eye and the mind catches a surprising amount, the split-second emergence of recognisably human faces and forms. However, watching 'Eye Myth' frame-by-frame opens up a whole new film, revealing details that previously had been obscured from us by the passing of time. In my review of 'Commingled Containers (1997),' I wrote that Brakhage captures and focuses on "brief, fleeting moments… shows us something that's before our own eyes, but that we've never seen before." Slowing down 'Eye Myth' for a second viewing shows us something that we've seen before.

This is one of my favourite works by the legendary Stan Brakhage, and it's only eight seconds long! This indescribable eye-candy is often shown repeated three times, followed by a much slower-running detail so you can see the complexity and the abundance of images (resembling computer pixels) that dance by your eyes. As usual, Brakhage is making a piece on perception of vision. If you do see the version which has the slow detail on the end, you will be equally surprised by how much you missed and how much your fleeting eye did grasp after all.

What can someone say that about a 9 second film that doesn't

sound pretentious, and ultimately take longer to read that viewing

the film itself? Nothing, but I'll spill it anyway...



EYE MYTH (1967) is worth seeing, several times if possible.

Utilizing a piece of pre-photographed celluloid Brakhage then

proceeded to paint over and etch into the images (only a seated

man is briefly discernable) to achieve a roiling miasma of visceral

colours and fractured shades. It's short and sweet and

surprisingly effective. More important probably was the fact that it

was, for Brakhage, a stepping-stone towards achieving a

"mastery" over purely visual mythos with his films, a "confidence- booster" that would lead to the incredible hand-painted

masterpieces of the following decades. {I'd highly recommend

purchasing the "by Brakhage: an anthology" DVD for a chance to

see this film manually on a slower speed, and thereby catch the

richness of the images and colour-washed movements all the

clearer.}



7/10. You'll be surprised what tricks the eyes play on the mind with

this one.