Protraph
Lack of good storyline.
UnowPriceless
hyped garbage
Gary
The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.
ThurstonHunger
Watched about half of this film in one sitting and then came back the next day and had my twin boys (8 years as of this viewing) watch it with me. I wanted to talk to them about the idea of film, I thought maybe through cartoons they had seen fake versions of when the film would get stuck in the projector and start to heat and melt/burn.Indeed for some of us old enough, we recall this in school or at home with threaded projectors before the advent of digital. Plus I used it to talk about the idea of an image that is scrambled can sometimes have a transfixing effect on the viewer, as you are not sure what it is. I left out the porn overtones (they are 8) but in terms of UHF/VHF or any kind of corrupted signal, how interesting that is.And then we just talked about film being experimental and not necessarily telling a story. Like painting or a sculpture. Well, this is that sort of film. From reading one or two reviews here, am I to believe that the film was not doctored in anyway? Rrreaaly? The boys did see the boxer scene, and that was tremendous they had some creative responses to that, but I would have bet the biggest tub of popcorn that it, and several other images (like the reverse images early on) were indeed artistically created rather than merely damaged by time.Anyways, I might have convinced the boys, and myself too. I think some of this sort of film works better in shorter sittings anyways, but I know a friend of mine who clued me into the great Ann Arbor Film Fest definitely digs Morrison, so I was happy to get a chance to see this, albeit at home on, yep, digital disk.Oh and I cannot resist clicking the SPOILER box for this one just for a lark.
karbenbased8786
This film is a bunch of random pieces of old, deteriorating, film being played with music. Doesn't sound too interesting - and it isn't. According to the interview section on the DVD, Morrison explains that this film is some sort of symbolic expression of the decay that all life goes through. While this sounds like a nice analogy, the film doesn't really convey anything deep or philosophical. Just watching a bunch of old damaged film doesn't really end up conveying much of anything - all we get is to watch old film! The visual effect is sort of cool for about ten minutes, then its just boring. Its all black and white and just seems monotonous. Its like I get the point about decay in the first five minutes. The music in this film is excellent however, is you like abstract and dark ambiance music. In this case, the film isn't worth much but the soundtrack is great!
kima-6
The premise for this film project is deceptively simple. Take a whole bunch of decaying old film negatives, splice them together and viola: instant art film. This highly recommended film by Bill Morrison creates an effect similar to the visual kaleidoscope you'd see in the Kowaanisqatsi trio of films. Opening with shots of a whirling dervish who punctuates the beginning, middle and end of the film, Morrison sets up a series of "action" shots that when watched slowed down with their naturally occurring decay, take on an otherworldly feeling. Decaying celluloid takes on emotional meaning, reflecting the new readings that the viewer brings to the film. What were probably once quite banal scenes of nuns overseeing children walking through a courtyard, for example, take on an eerie ghostly effect and a scene where a man makes untoward advances on a woman is given heighten tension by the angry swirls the rotting film creates. Some segments were disturbing, others funny, many just beautifully impressionistic.This 70-minute film is quite trippy to watch and your mind will try to make sense of it by finding "things" in the shapes the crackling celluloid creates. (Is that mould? Is it waves crashing on the shore? Neither?) The dramatic score for the film seems lifted off of the disintegrating film, with its odd, oft-times sinister, octaves. At some points near the end, the onslaught of music combined with the repetitiveness of the images was almost too much. Interestingly, no colour film was used. On the one hand it would be difficult to even call this a film, on the other it is actually a film made literally of film. Think Vertov's A Man with a Movie Camera meets Bunuel/Dali's Un Chien andalou. All up, this is a beautiful study in remediation and a film student's wetdream.
paulnewman2001
Bill Morrison's 2002 experimental feature just has to be seen to be believed. From thousands of decaying archive prints, he's selected the most baroque examples of negative decay in which the nitrate-based film stock has degraded to the point that its images melt into one another or are partially obscured under whirling vortices of psychedelic disintegration.The finished effect is simply stunning. A boxer unleashes a flurry of blows at the spot where his opponent once stood but which is now obliterated by a seething column of celluloid magma.Nuns escorting a crocodile of schoolchildren are thrown into a near-photo negative contrast, making them look more like daunting sentinels herding their captives. A kissing couple attain a sense of heightened reality in a world rendered in shimmering tones of silver by the process of decay. Phantom faces and objects swim momentarily into lucidity from images now transformed into a kaleidoscope of amoebic distortion and static.In a courtroom scene, the elderly female witness shifts in and out of certainty as her features are pulled and warped like gum into monstrous facades suggestive of liquefying skulls while the judge delivers his verdict from the writhing face of a nightmare. These images insinuate themselves into the imagination like bad dreams recorded directly from the subconscious and imperfectly reassembled via primitive technology. They feel as if they might have been the ancient television broadcasts of some impossibly distant alien culture, plucked out of the cosmos by radio telescope and translated for human eyes. To complete and reinforce the experience, Michael Gordon has contributed an astounding soundtrack, likened elsewhere to the sound of a plane crashing in slow motion and calling to mind the more haunting industrial works of Philip Glass, rescored for an apocalyptic funeral mass. You could turn off the sound and play the film to, say, something delicate by Debussy for a totally different experience but that would only deny you the awesome, hypnotic power of the visuals and music working in harmony.Morrison's selection of material appears to be far from random and he's evidently chosen images of permanence and stability for the ironic effect of watching them transformed by inevitable corruption. This remarkable project works on so many levels – as a slice of cinematic history from the earliest days of the medium; as a study in the nature of decomposition; as a rococo piece of visual and aural entertainment for the chemically enhanced; even, perhaps, as the most authentic science fiction film ever made. If the function of cinema is to transport its audience into another reality via the willing suspension of disbelief, to show them things they've never seen before and to create a compelling emotional state from a synthesis of sounds and visions, Decasia: The State Of Decay must qualify as one of the most accomplished examples of the form produced to date.Guaranteed, you've never seen anything else even close to it.
