Apotheosis

This is a breathtaking short that really gives the sense of being in a hot air balloon. This is also a great attempt of capturing "art" on screen and it feels like you are watching a living painting. The clouds, which are the stars of the film, are incredible.

I saw this in college back in 1972 as part of a series of Yoko Ono films. Her movies in general were interesting little experimental works. My fellow film society members were serious about films, and everyone in the theater enjoyed some of Yoko's flicks. This one however drove us all nuts. I clearly remember it as outrageously boring. It eventually pushed everyone in the hall to distraction. No, we weren't a bunch of wahoos there to drink and whoop it up. Sitting still through this thing is unbearable. The only film we ever booked more dull than this one was something from Afghanistan. [Remember that 1972 was long before today's terrorism.] It was obvious that the Afghanistanis had no idea of how to make a film. (They just turned a camera on as a village elder spoke. That may sound interesting but it was not.) Yoko did not have that excuse.

What a perfect film.....short and simple, Ono takes a camera and a boom mike onto a hot air balloon, kicks the rope, and starts the camera and lets us watch as it goes above the clouds for a 17 minute shot. Key things to notice: A roll of 16mm film films only 14 minutes yet the film runs for 17, meaning somewhere in the clouds Ono had another camera loaded and started when the first one ran out, yet somehow the splice is not noticeable and there weren't any computers at the time to fix this sort of thing.....all i can say is optical printing tricks at its best. The last shot, as the balloon rises above the clouds, the wind silences, and the sun becomes visible, is alone worth checking out this timeless classic of experimental film. Contact MOMA to borrow a print for your film classes or local museums.

Unlike the other John and Yoko shorts I watched on UbuWeb, this one had a more normal format of having a big hot-air balloon go up with the camera inside capturing the sights from there as we watch from the point-of-view inside of said balloon. Also unlike the others, John Lennon was the one who created this film in contrast to the more weird ones created by Yoko Ono. Unfortunately, John's movie is dull compared to the Yoko ones that were at least a little interesting. I mean, there's so many minutes one can look at nothing but clouds and the print I watched was washed out and despite what another commentary here said, there was no evidence of a boom mic as there was absolutely no sound from what I saw. So on that note, I regretfully have to rate Apotheosis the poorest of the John and Yoko projects I've yet seen.