Review of Prelude: Dog Star Man (1962) by Lucas S — 19 Aug 2010

We live in the world of simplicity.

Everything we do in life is simplified, our feelings, our ideals, our acts, slaves of the routine.The problem is that the human mind isn't simple, and all that simplism can drive a lot of people to madness, just check Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times and you will know what I'm talking about.

You know what? F*** That. Do this, watch Stan Brakhage's masterpiece, Dog Star Man. The movie is pure expressionism, it may be one of the most difficult movies to take, but once you get, you find yourself in another world.

I confess I disliked it the first time I saw, and said it was nothing but just a souless art work. Obviously, I was completely equivocated. The movie is about nothing, but also about everything, a sequence of juxtaposed images of almost anything forming a complete chaos, but strangely all those images seem to form a meaning.

"I thought it would be a little, simple film on a woodsman, myself as the woodsman, the wood-gatherer," but "it ended up as . . . an exploration of the whole history of man. I mean, as I climb this hill the images suggest in many ways, metaphorically and in other ways, the history of man himself and his endeavor, and the meaning of whatever it is he does and makes.".

(Stan Brakhage).

It may sound pretentious, but in fact the movie is close to that. It awakes part of human brains that are not used when we see other movies, creating undescribable feelings.

Seeing the movie, is almost like listening to music, it is not something to think about, but feel, and watch various times. Taking you to another world, where nothing is simple, but complex and deep, just the way they should be.

Final Rating: 10.