Begotten

Rating:
Summary: begotten will fit very nicely in your garbage can.
Review: Well, what can you say about begotten?

To cut to the chase, this movie is awful. It's amazing how these so-called intellectual types can enjoy this film. There is nothing intellectual about begotten. And there's not one frame that's enjoyable. . . . on the other hand, maybe that's the point.

I'm not religious. I'm no conservative. But I found begotten the most blasphemous movie I've ever seen: God kills himself with a straight razor and then defecates all over the place when he loses control of his bowel functions. Then 'mother earth' (in the guise of a woman) enters the room and manually extracts the corpse's semen (if you know what I mean) and becomes pregnant. The only taboo the E. Elias Merhige forgot to include is cannibalism.

Is this film art? ... [the film] will give you that 'I want to go home and take a shower' feeling.

The only problem I had was what to do with the DVD. I didn't want to sell it. I couldn't give it away. I ended up throwing begotten in the trash.

Rating:
Summary: Like a dream...
Review: Begotten felt like viewing a dream - fragmented, ponderous at times, yet full of elements that seemed familiar. Kinda like somebody went back in time and documented something ancient. A couple of anachronistic details pulled me out of the experience, but I will leave them unsaid so as not to spoil the flow for someone who has not yet been exposed to Begotten.

Rating:
Summary: WATCH IT ALOT, OR NOT AT ALL . . .
Review: (Revised: 7/15/02)

One viewing of Merhige's BEGOTTEN sends you to Bellevue.
Twenty viewings of Merhige's BEGOTTEN sends you to the head of the class.

Beware the pseudo-intellectuals who try to impress you with their ever-so-refined tropisms, affinities, and sensitivities about how disgusted they are with work like this.

They are probably annoyed with how it reminds them of their own all-too-present brutality. They are less 'refined' than they seem.

Things like THE BEGOTTEN aren't 'wrong,' or of a different or innappropriate paradigm.
The point of education is to assimilate ALL the paradigms.
Assume a polite and safe distance, and be receptive.

This film seperates the men from the boys. Get a copy for each room in the house. When you need to determine who among you is real and who isn't, show it.
Then you may know who your real friends are.

You have, then, been hereby sufficiently informed:
IGNORE THIS ADVICE AT YOUR PERIL.
A word to the wise should be sufficient; and a nod is as good as a wink, to a blind horse.

Rating:
Summary: This will stain your soul
Review: "Begotten" is best watched during daylight and with a remote so you can fast forward just to prove it is man made. Unholy. Unforgiving. It doesn't make sense. Hell looks like this, and yet the last scene is one of hope.

The only movie I can compare it to is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre #1.

I never need to see this movie again.

Brutal. Gorgeous in its vision. Condmemning to all who watch.

Rating:
Summary: This will make you different.
Review: Weird. WEIRD. "Begotten" looks like a silent film made by a mad surrealist back in the 1910s. ...The footage is striking, but the tone is inconsistent. ...In any case, it's fascinating and well worth seeing. You'll get past the gore after a couple of viewings. "Begotten" proves that the silent film is not dead; it was technically superceded before it had lost its power to communicate. ...

Rating:
Summary: This will make you different.
Review: Weird. WEIRD. "Begotten" looks like a silent film made by one of the Lumiere brothers while having a nervous breakdown, which was then re-edited (with new footage added) by a mad surrealist in the 1920s. That's a mixed blessing; the footage is striking, but the tone is inconsistent. It looks like it was shot by people on the Mr. Gumby level of evolution and then edited/reconstructed by a preacher from the turn of the century. There's an inconsistency between the 'silent movie' footage and the 'handheld documentary' footage. In any case, it's fascinating and well worth seeing. I got past the gore after a couple of viewings. "Begotten" proves that the silent film is not dead; it was technically superceded before it had lost its power to communicate. The fact that a film is silent, creaky, and ancient-looking sometimes makes it, in a paradoxical way, more realistic than a film using the latest computer-graphics techniques. I hope that one day E. Elias Merhige will film an H. P. Lovecraft story as a silent movie.

Rating:
Summary: fascinating imagery, but gets a tad boring
Review: i'm an art house type, but i think "begotten" pushes even my very few limits a little bit in terms of being too subjective. what happens is this:this bizarre woman creature thing is cutting herself for oh, about a half an hour, and then a bunch of druid type creatures drag around this weird little mutant dude around and seem to torture him? while he breathes nastily into the audio. there isn't any dialogue at all. this goes on. and on. and on. till the lady is prostrated with the mutant dude, and they keep getting shots of her (and his) genital areas. the movie eventually ends.

if this movie was meant to be a series of stills i'd want a photo album of it just because of the surreal, netherworld sort of flavor it has and i think it is worth watching (in intervals) just because of the atmosphere it creates, one of mythical something or other, but don't be misled by the pretentious into thinking this is some kind of masterpiece of so called "german expressionism" because it's in black and white and it feels kind of doomy. german expressionism doesn't have anything to do with this, unless you're straining real hard for an explanation as to what the hell it means and decide to come out of left field with a pseudo interpretation. this ain't the cabinet of dr. caligari, but students of film should buy it anyway.

Rating:
Summary: BORING
Review: The trailer states that you can't get through begotten without being marked. Well i just watched it, and i wasn't marked. in fact the only thing that i thought after i saw this movie was, "i will never get that time back." If your in the mood for a boring, drawn out movie, begotten is your movie.

Rating:
Summary: Simply Incomprehensible
Review: This movie deserves either one star or five, so I've given it five. It's not as offensive as others have said because the images are so difficult to discern that one's imagination is forced to fill in the details. If gore and offal are what's desired, the viewer would be more satisfied with one of dozens of low-budget splatter flicks. Perhaps 'Begotten' shouldn't be considered a film at all, but a series of black-and-white art photographs arranged in a semi-random order. The picture on the cover is about as clear as they get. It has a plot and a story, but without the notes that are provided I doubt anybody could know what they are. I enjoy the movie for its extreme artfulness (artful in the sense of being a product of labor), but I haven't been able to watch the entire thing in one sitting. One must be in a certain sort of mood (chemically induced or not) for it.

Rating:
Summary: High Contrast
Review: When I saw the opening of this film in New York over a decade ago, I brought along my girlfriend, fortunately also a devotee of the cinematically strange. The Village Voice thought it was worth seeing, but their review was impenetrable. Of course, I found out why, and my movie date and I turned to look at each other constantly. "Jesus, honey, is this gross or what?" or "Wow, what the hell was that?" I'm glad it's on DVD and I'll own it mostly because it belongs in the collection of anyone who appreciates the bizarre. It's not really a cult film, because that would mean you could watch it over and over. I haven't seen it since then, but I'll probably watch it a couple more times before archiving it. I have little to add to the voices, articulate and otherwise, already raised on either side of the issues of this flick. Yes, it's pretentious, disturbing, derivative, boring, harrowing, imaginative, over-long and largely pointless if beautiful. It is not for the faint-hearted or those looking for Dali/Bunuel or Lynch. Filmmakers had been running out of stuff to shock us with, but this director came up with the goods. I can't say this is a great film, but it's a great film to flesh out part of the fringe. Since this movie occupies a niche with only one member right now, it's going to have to sit on its own until someone finds a way to do it better or provides competition for it. Yes, I'll be careful not to let anything rest against it on the shelf. Reminds me of Poison somehow, and yes, Eraserhead. I don't think a more humorless avant-garde endeavor has ever made its way onto celluloid; you just can't beat Lynch's twitching chicken legs. Begotten is a must-have if you already own over 100 films.