Begotten

Now when I think of film, I really do think of individual stories which are only united in the medium in which they're presented. This medium has a myriad of ways to be presented, so as far as a uniting theme it's broad.

Of course this idea doesn't really go that well in practice. It doesn't take a viewer that long to realise that most movies look an awful lot alike, and that stories and plots borrow from each other liberally all the time. So when something comes along that is unique in ways unlike anything before it, it's an adventure. Maybe not a good adventure, but an adventure all the same.

"Begotten" is one of these movies. It's hard to watch, and I'm not going to kid anyone by saying that it's because of the imagery. It's the pace of the thing that makes it a trial. But although it moves as slow as molasses, it makes for a powerful visual treat and one that I'd recommend to anyone looking for something out of the ordinary. Besides, any movie that has a character called "God Killing Himself" isn't your everyday fare.

What is funny about this film is that it reminds me strongly of a short I saw on HBO about 9 years ago. There was a series on cable which had hour long short films by different directors and one of them had to do with a film that was so horrible and ghastly that any audiece that watched it was immediately driven insane. I'm not sure of the name of the series, but the faux film which was so dangerous could easily have been "Begotten". Grainy, black and white, and glorious.