Decasia

Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking
Review: This is film-making in a very pure form: abstract imagery with no hint of narrative, held together by some of the most difficult music ever written for film.
Bill Morrison worked with Michael Gordon to put images to a symphony that he was working on. Michael Gordon also, in part, wrote to the film in a true collaboration.
The film is composed of sections of old, decomposing celluloid: old films that are suffering from innatention, damp, heat, whatever it is that distresses celluloid film. These sections are beautifully cut together into a whirling, blurring mass of fractional image and abstract mess that provokes thought and poses more questions than it answers. Butterflies flit in and out of the negative to positive and back again; a boxer loses his arms in a sticky amorphous goo; a woman's face fleetingly appears, contorts into a hideous mask and is lost again...
The music underscoring this is compelling too. Sounding in places like Steve Reich - the motoric pulses - and in other places like Gloria Coates - the detuned strings, this is music about rotting, about the decay of tonal centres.
Do not miss this if you like experimental music or film.