Film Review – Begotten (Unrated, 1991)

+++GRAPHIC CONTENT+++

I discovered this movie after hearing about it on the Internet, and was immediately intrigued. As a fan of experimental and/or horror films, I also decided that it was a crime that I had not seen it yet. In doing initial research on it and after watching the trailer, I wasn’t sure if I was ready. You see, I love horror movies, disturbing movies, and movies that force us to look at and process things that we aren’t used to looking at or processing. But on the same page, I am a complete wuss sometimes, and I’ll start hyping up something like a book, a film, or a video game as too much for me to handle. And that’s exactly what I did with E. Elias Merhige’s 1991 film ‘Begotten.’

According to the film’s synopsis on Wikipedia, the film is based on the Christian Bible’s Book of Genesis. I say that because if you went into the film not knowing anything about it, you might pick up on the themes of birth, rebirth, and life from death, but you wouldn’t pick up on much else.

The opening scene starts with God disemboweling himself with a straight-razor. Mother Earth emerges from His remains. She then proceeds to orally pleasure the corpse, spits up the result, and impregnates herself with the semen. She gives birth to the fully grown, yet infant-like flailing and defenseless Son of Earth. She leaves him in the wastes, and he is hi-jacked by a tribe of Nomads. These Nomads transport him to their homeland, dragging him by a lengthy rope-like umbilical cord, where they excitedly receive Son of Earth’s organic vomit as gifts. They burn him alive. SoE emerges from the ashes a day later, and is greeted by his mother, who witnessed the burning. She nooses a new rope around his neck and drags him away from the burning ashes. In the wastes, they are set upon by the Nomads again, only this time they focus on Mother Earth. They proceed to violently beat and rape her, and leave the Son to mourn (?) over her. A pair (Or trio… Or group… You can’t really tell, and I’ll explain why in a minute) of Strangers appear to drag Mother Earth away and dismember her. Meanwhile, the Son crawls towards their encampment, only to be captured by them, to be dismembered himself. The Strangers bury the remains of Mother Earth and the Son, and on the next day, a lush garden sprouts from the burial grounds.

Yeah. That’s some heavy stuff. But I’ll be honest; I had the synopsis beside me while I watched it so that I could fully understand the movie. I armed myself with the synopsis and daylight, because as I said before, I was hyping myself up to watch the most disturbing film I had ever seen. The end result is that I really didn’t see anything. Merhige filmed the movie on black and white reversal film, and then spent most of the post-production re-photographing every single frame to get a strict monochromatic product. There is hardly any greyscale. So, it often times is hard to register what you are immediately looking at. This is where I think 90 percent of my paranoia came from; As a result of watching the trailer without knowing what I was watching. I guess that’s usually the way horror-film trailers work. The unusual mannerisms of the characters in the movie definitely bring the audience to attention, much like they do in creepy hard rock music videos. For me though, the challenge was keeping my attention afterwards. The film is a mere 78 minutes long, not even as long as most Disney animated features, yet I feel that it may be 30, even forty minutes too long. The scenes, the imagery (Once you process and understand it), and the… Concept are intriguing and can be powerful, but ultimately I found the film to be dragging. The trouble Merhige went to in post-production also seemed to be a little redundant to me, although I understand why he chose to make the film the way he did; In color it would have been an unmitigated mess, and the imagery wouldn’t have had the same meaning. It would have been lost in a sea of red and the Son’s seizures. Speaking of post-production, sound editor and composer Evan Alam must have had a rather easier time of it, as the sound in the film consists of only dusk-time crickets and some subtle thrashing or shuffling throughout the entire thing. This, however, may be my favorite aspect of the film. The crickets serve to calm the audience while the intake the unsettling images they are watching.

Overall, I would say that I am glad to have finally watched this film, and to add it to my list of “Stuff That I’ve Watched.” However, I wouldn’t call it the avant-garde masterpiece so many claim it to be. It didn’t make the impact on me I thought it would, and I ended up appreciating different elements of it that I didn’t expect, such as the sound (Or lack thereof), and the subtle passing of what seemed seven days through sunrises and sunset. I would consider it an important film of modern films, but I can’t really put my finger on why. I was both intrigued and puzzled at the film quality, soothed and bored with the sound, and appreciative of yet also annoyed with the images used in this interpretation of the birth of the world and human life. The art student in me found it very interesting and appreciated the film. The film critic in me appreciates what the film was trying to say and do, even if I was confused and sometimes bored with the way it was saying and doing it. But the regular old dude in me was disappointed that 78 minutes of my life spent didn’t pay out in any of the ways I thought it would. Of course, that could also be a good thing as well.

The opening scene is featured on the poster. May not be as creepy in the actual film

… Also, I plan on making a summary comic about it. You’ll see later ^_~