I was somewhat disappointed by this film because I expected to see a full autopsy being performed from start to finish. In his interview, Brakhage said that he chose not to use any weird effects with the material he shot because one doesn't need metaphor for something so primal. Yet his way of shooting and editing his footage made me feel like there was a great deal of manipulation involved. This was not an objective look at the human body. What we got was a mishmash of body parts being filmed so close up, and shot and edited with so much motion, one can barely tell what one is looking at. Although I'd seen somewhat similar stuff in "The Re-Animator", I did find the shots of brain autopsies fascinating, especially the way that one's scalp skin is peeled back so much that it covers the entire face, making us look truly alien (one imagines that H.R. Giger saw a few autopsies before creating his aliens). Still, very few shots of the brain, and we see no shots of them being dissected. I consider the human brain to be the most fascinating thing in the universe so I was disappointed. I also resented the shots early in the film of victims who obviously died by violent means. I suppose some viewers like the exterior shots of the autopsies because it makes them try to guess who these people were and how they came to such grisly deaths. But that to me is kind of like the junk one can see in those Mondo Cane type movies. It's sensationalist and exploitive and completely ruins one's sense of objectivity. I preferred the actual shots of the autopsies that simply allowed one to see the glorious pulp that meticulously keeps us functioning every hour of every day. The film excels brilliantly at that level though as I said, there was not any cognitive approach to displaying the organs. One can interpret Brakhage's films in any way they see fit, but I'm guessing that either he wanted to create an impressionist view of life through its ultimate mortality, or he is just another hack who prefers exploitation and sensationalism over reality. I appreciated the film for what it did show, but in my opinion, the inside of us human beings is fascinating enough without dancing lenses and choppy editing obscuring it. Someone should have told Brakhage he can't top God.
