In praise of Stan Brakhage’s most dis­turb­ing film document

There is noth­ing spe­cial about a morgue in the city of Pitts­burgh. One could argue there is also noth­ing spe­cial about Pitts­burgh itself – but Amer­i­can exper­i­men­tal film­mak­er Stan Brakhage decid­ed to train his eye on insti­tu­tions (polic­ing, health­care, coro­ner) in urban Penn­syl­va­nia all the same. The result was what is now referred to as his ​“Pitts­burgh Tril­o­gy” con­sist­ing of Eyes, Deus Ex, and The Act of See­ing with One’s Own Eyes.

The morgue sit­u­ates us in the final of these films (The Act of See­ing with One’s Own Eyes), a Brakhage title that’s gained cult-clas­sic, almost grind­house-lev­el sta­tus. This sta­tus real­ly only means any­thing in niche cinephile cir­cles and under­ground film fan­dom, but I think it should be required view­ing in a gen­er­al audi­ence sense for the Hal­loween sea­son. Brakhage achieves an extrem­i­ty of body hor­ror that splat­ter­house auteurs and David Cro­nen­berg could only strive for, but most notably, he does so with­out extra­or­di­nary expla­na­tion, escapist mythol­o­gy, or brand construction.

That’s not to men­tion the fact that The Act of See­ing with One’s Own Eyes is incred­i­bly hard to find, lend­ing it a for­bid­den, taboo rep­u­ta­tion. It’s also silent, as with all of Brakhage’s work – anoth­er tough but unusu­al sell­ing point for casu­al movie­go­ers. This allows for a visu­al expe­ri­ence unteth­ered by sen­so­ry accom­pa­ni­ment. You are not direct­ed how to feel by the addi­tion of music, dia­logue, ambi­ence, or nar­ra­tion. You just feel it all.

I saw a 35mm print of it at Anthol­o­gy Film Archives in New York City, which was one of the most intense and exhil­a­rat­ing screen­ings I’ve ever attend­ed. In the deaf­en­ing qui­et, all you could hear were peo­ple fid­get­ing in their seats, breathy groans, ner­vous laugh­ter, and con­cerned whis­per­ing. A dizzy­ing, voyeuris­tic cam­era lingers on actu­al cadav­ers posed rigid­ly across cold, obelisk-like slabs. Often face­less mor­ti­cians han­dle them like man­u­fac­tured goods, mea­sur­ing their limbs (and gen­i­talia, which pro­voked a loud invol­un­tary chuck­le from a guy in the front row), carv­ing into skin and lift­ing and pulling it like taffy, scoop­ing out brains from skull cham­bers with gloved hands – need I go on?

Well, I will. A cou­ple of the most stom­ach-squirm­ing scenes will for­ev­er be wrig­gling like nema­todes through my mem­o­ry, includ­ing blood being vac­u­umed from the corpse through a tube, and then not smooth­ly cas­cad­ing out of it into a chas­mic indus­tri­al sink. No, much worse: sput­ter­ing. A ch-ch-ch-ch motion, like a sprin­kler. That one real­ly got me. The oth­er is a face’s flesh being snipped enough to become stretch­able and rolled back entire­ly, expos­ing the inner work­ings beneath.

Which is more chill­ing – these images them­selves or the thought of view­ing them in total silence? The answer is both in equal mea­sure. Brakhage exten­sive­ly engaged with the dis­tinc­tions between doc­u­men­tary and doc­u­ment in the con­text of mov­ing images; this dif­fer­ence took on many forms, but the gen­er­al para­phras­ing is that he viewed doc­u­men­tary as a manip­u­la­tive tra­di­tion of pre­sent­ing fac­tu­al occur­rences as objec­tive, with­out acknowl­edg­ing the sub­jec­tiv­i­ty inher­ent in the camera’s frame. Doc­u­ment, on the oth­er hand, was a bit more com­pli­cat­ed but cru­cial to his prac­tice as a film­mak­er. It was, as Marie Nesthus observes, not sim­ply a mat­ter of whether there’s ​“a pres­ence or absence of the artist’s mark, but rather in the degree of its visibility.”

The Act of See­ing with One’s Own Eyes is, through and through, a doc­u­ment. Con­trary to some of his ear­li­er work, Brakhage shrugged off the urge here to inter­cut the morgue footage with more impres­sion­able imagery, like moun­tains and open sky and snow, for he ​“knew it was impos­si­ble … to inter­rupt THIS parade of the dead with ANY­thing what­so­ev­er, any ​‘escape’ a blas­phe­my.” There’s still an acknowl­edge­ment of the director’s imprint, with hyper close-ups and bod­ies framed in frag­ment­ed tableaux. But it’s arranged in such a way as to evoke the force­ful machi­na­tions and over­sight of insti­tu­tion­al documents.

Brakhage is run­ning us through the fac­to­ry line, shov­ing the fine print of autop­sy pro­to­col right in our faces, pry­ing our eyes open to make us look. In one of the stark­est works of body hor­ror, he strips away all the sto­ry­telling, all the shock, all the world­build­ing, and makes the mon­ster our very own per­cep­tion. While this has always been present in Brakhage’s work, nowhere is it done so insidiously.

It is a doc­u­ment in the sense that the film­mak­er decid­ed to make his imprint vis­i­ble, but just bare­ly enough to let the images and process­es on dis­play speak vol­umes in our reg­is­ter­ing of them. With­out any lit­er­al vol­ume – silent in often unbear­able ways – this mor­bid work leaves all the heavy lift­ing on us. For that rea­son, it’s hor­ror. Right to its dis­em­bow­eled, de-brained core.

In a sem­i­nal essay, Stephen King argues that ​“When we pay our four or five bucks and seat our­selves at tenth-row cen­ter in a the­ater show­ing a hor­ror movie, we are dar­ing the night­mare.” While it’s a lot more expen­sive now (and per­son­al­ly, I don’t like the cen­ter of a row)King’s point is that, whether we are cog­nizant of it or not, we all desire the expe­ri­ence that hor­ror affords. So why not add The Act of See­ing with One’s Own Eyes to that pan­theon that we cycle through every Octo­ber? It’s a unique class of night­mare unto itself, dar­ing us to spend 32 un-acces­sorized min­utes of silence in a sub-base­ment that dou­bles as a city morgue, the only thing guid­ing us being Brakhage’s uncom­fort­ably inti­mate curios­i­ty behind the lens.

In most hor­ror cin­e­ma, no mat­ter its for­ays into var­i­ous sub­gen­res, you’re pre­sent­ed with a sense of hope (the final girl in slash­ers), the lack there­of (every­thing in tor­ture porn), a mes­sage (high-con­cept, A24 fare), or a bonkers play­ground (ultra­vi­o­lent weirdo stuff like Mandy). As shock­ing as a more con­tem­po­rary cult break­through like Ter­ri­fi­er 3 may be, it’s too…fun. The bells and whis­tles make it so, and it doesn’t have the lever­age of real, unfic­tion­al­ized gore. With this unfor­get­table short, you’re in Brakhage’s world, with no high­er pow­er on which to anchor your resilience. You may find beau­ty, you may find despair, you may find mean­ing, or, most like­ly, you’ll find noth­ing at all — noth­ing but your­self, dressed down, lit­er­al­ly nude, and tin­kered with like clockwork.

A fit­ting expe­ri­ence for the sea­son of All Hal­lows: in Brakhage’s world, there is no god. No anti-god either. Only flesh.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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