The Pittsburgh Trilogy: Note to self: don't die [movie note]
eyes/Deus Ex/The Act of Seeing with one's own eyes
Directed by Stan Brakhage
Perhaps the chronological was not the best order in which to show these. Brakhage made these in 1971 about Pittsburgh institutions: the cops, the hospital and the morgue, and the last of these, uncharacteristically straightforward, wipes out memories of the first two. I could describe, as others have, how The Act of Seeing is really about the movement of light, or how it's about the elegance of the human form, but this would be bullshit because it's about A BUNCH OF FUCKING CORPSES BEING FUCKING EVISCERATED. We're brought face to face with the reality of death -- that one day we're going to be a carcass on a slab, and if we justify an autopsy, we'll look like something hung in a butcher's window. Not beautiful. But educational.
Near the end of Deus Ex, we see a human heart inside a living body, still beating. Now that's beautiful.
A MINUS
Directed by Stan Brakhage
Perhaps the chronological was not the best order in which to show these. Brakhage made these in 1971 about Pittsburgh institutions: the cops, the hospital and the morgue, and the last of these, uncharacteristically straightforward, wipes out memories of the first two. I could describe, as others have, how The Act of Seeing is really about the movement of light, or how it's about the elegance of the human form, but this would be bullshit because it's about A BUNCH OF FUCKING CORPSES BEING FUCKING EVISCERATED. We're brought face to face with the reality of death -- that one day we're going to be a carcass on a slab, and if we justify an autopsy, we'll look like something hung in a butcher's window. Not beautiful. But educational.
Near the end of Deus Ex, we see a human heart inside a living body, still beating. Now that's beautiful.
A MINUS
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