Begotten

Rating:
Summary: Grotesquely Delicious
Review: Begotten's disturbing imagery shoved itself inside of me and ripped open the place where all of my supernatural fears lay dormant. The texture of the film was like watching a movie encased in a snow globe where each action of a character came together to create a beautiful, swirling mass of iridescent flakes. The timing of the film allows the viewer respite from the most brutal scenes while creating delicious anticipation for more. Elias Merhige's vision brought back every childhood fascination I had with religion. You have to see it!

Rating:
Summary: wonderful foray into the depths of the subconscious mind
Review: Begotten is a brutal and beautiful film of great depth. It goes into the back of your brain to reveal feelings incompatable with daily routine and only seldom approached in film. The film soundtrack is a bliissful experimental work that facillitates the strange seductive magic of the visuals. The viewer is transported to a state of mind reminiscent of that feeling one gets from Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. A rare and fine experience. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Yeah, Whatever...
Review: Although this movie at times certainly satisfies one's need for perverse and ultra violent film, ultimately Begotten is plain boring! I've read the synopsis and I don't buy its symbolic meaning. Lets call a spade a spade. Creator Elias Merhige's "artistic vision" in Begotten is a thinly veiled justification for his appetite for the sickly morbid (believe me, I sympathize). Don't get me wrong; certain scenes are ingeniously disturbing, and reason alone for taking a glance. Otherwise though, Begotten is composed of unnecessarily drawn out and or repetitive shots and ambiguous close ups. Merhige seems to often times use the "Chiaroscuro" style to abstract without purpose. The down time between scenes of interest can be like watching flies #$%@. I'm certain Elias Merhige stands on his pedestal smitten with delusions of grandeur as his ego's fed by the mass of positive reviews, some declaring his film "One of the ten most important films of modern times." Here's my two bits. Do yourself a favor and treat this movie as a porn. Use the fast forward button often. 2 stars for the truly disturbing scenes.

Rating:
Summary: Eraserhead this is not!
Review: This film, alternately boring and compelling, is a work of pure symbolic imagery. I do not know what I would have interpreted it to mean had I not read the sleeve of the video. Unlike my favorite film of all time, Eraserhead (a film with which it will inevitably be compared), Begotten made no attempt to connect the abstract, yet gorgeous, images to a reality with which I can identify. While Lynch's work takes an average man (average, at least, in the world in which it is set) and adds surreal elements to his slow crawl toward insanity, Begotten is practically "DaDa-ist" in its unrepenting lack of human connection. I gave this tepid piece of pretention three stars, and would own it, simply for the imagery. It is some of the most beautiful I have ever seen.

Rating:
Summary: One star is far too generous!
Review: As a fan of alternative and surrealist cinema, I eagerly searched for a copy of this film after reading the glowing reviews fellow "art-house junkies" were giving it. After finally finding a copy at a local video store I almost asked for my rental fee back! Sure, this film is art, if your idea of art is 45 minutes of blurry, hooded figures dragging an epileptic Christ-figure across a barren landscape in slow motion! The first 10 minutes are interesting, if not mildly stomach churning (not necessarily a drawback), but after that the film becomes redundant and dull. I was bitterly disappointed, as were the three other art-movie fanatics I had invited over to watch it. Do yourself a favor and skip this one. If you want something experimental, go back to the early b/w short films by David Lynch. Heck, even a Kevin Costner movie would have been better! (well.... not really, but you get the point!)

Rating:
Summary: (correction)
Review: After rereading my previous review of this film, I realized that I made a statement that would be misunderstood: the imagery "can be dismissed as pagan mythology." That is not what I intended to say. One might dismiss the film's contents as merely pagan mythology, but there is much more there. Whatever your frame of reference, you have something to contribute to your personal interpretation of the film, because it is about every single one of us. Begotten is a beautiful film that should be seen and taken seriously by everyone.

Rating:
Summary: Very Disturbing!
Review: Reviewer: cur from Seattle This cult classic is hard to describe, but if you are in to pure unadulterated disturbances, you will like this film. almost silent, but the souds you do hear only add to a black and white parody of death and redemption, like osiris, but in a darker surreal depiction. I have to date not been able to view the film from start to finish without having to take a break. Definitely a worthy collectors item but not a film you would want your 12 year old to watch.

Rating:
Summary: Approach with an mind, or don't bother
Review: In a hurry, I grabbed "Begotten" from the rental shelf because the art on the box front promised something different and disturbing. I took the tape home in a plain plastic tape box, having never read the synopsis on the back and whatever comments it may have had on it from the critics. I watched it alone in the dark after midnight, with no idea what it was about and no preconceived notions. From start to finish, I was transfixed. "Begotten" is a primal, subconscious, fever-dream. What one comes away with, after seeing it, tells more about the viewer than it does about the film. With the final credits, I discovered that the film maker called his characters "self-destroying god", "earth mother", etc. At its core, "Begotten" works as a parable about the cycle of life from death, an image which both starts and completes the film. But all the same, I'm glad these labels were saved for the end, as it allowed me to find my own meaning. The Mother and Son were distinct individuals to me rather than archetypes in a pagan cosmology. I saw a cold, self-involved mother reject her imperfect son, only to embrace him after he'd been accepted by the other women. Upon taking him from their protection, Mother and Son are attacked by a society that fears and hates the son's imperfection and the mother who could give birth to one such as he. (...) What was done to the mother was too much like rape and murder to be seen as anything less appalling. The son mourning at his dead mother's body was for me the most memorable image of the whole piece. The attempt to obliterate Mother and Son by cutting away their remains, paralleled the father's attempts at self obliteration with which the story began, and in the end, proved as futile. Life from death, full circle. Of course, your mileage may vary. This is one of those rare films where the individual must become involved on a personal level, or they will get nothing from it. Personally, this one will be with me for the rest of my life, and that is not a bad thing. END

Rating:
Summary: For Another Buck And A Half She Could Have Gotten The Wax
Review: In 1971 a writer for Rolling Stone asked the following question in a review of the Stooges' album Fun House: "Do you want your mind blown so badly it'll take you two weeks to find all the pieces?" Yeah. Exactly. Tell me the folks at Blair Witch Project never saw this film. However, on third or fourth viewing, silliness starts to creep in - during the Four Guys Swabbing Her Inner Thighs scene, the remark in the title of this review came to mind....

Rating:
Summary: BEWARE!
Review: This video's evil I tells ya, EVIL! I have never seen something so crazy as this. I loved it, I hated it, I don't know how I feel about it. I just have never seen anything like it. It opens with a grainy image of a bloody zombie-like thing with guts hanging off of it and just decends into even more craziness. I recommend it just to see it, because even if you hate it you'll be able to talk about it for weeks.