nineXtwelve

When you climb a mountain and come down the other side, you're in a different place. When we saw Prelude: Dog Star Man in 1963, after it was over we were in a new world. My college roommate Bob and I ran a film series - the last night was this masterpiece. Brakhage had just finished editing it. He sent us the 16mm print in a can. (There were a few bits of popcorn in the can too.) The print even had some last-minute splices in it. I couldn't imagine him sending it out with splices. But that was his generosity. Watching the film with a hundred students who, like almost everyone else on Earth, had never seen a movie remotely like this one, was a thrilling experience. They loved it. I certainly did - two years later, my film school thesis was about the complete version, which Brakhage had titled The Art of Vision. He passed away last year - perhaps the cancer was caused by the toxic pigments he used to diligently paint his cinematic creations, particularly his later, completely abstract works. But the mountain remains - the mountain of his film output, the mountain of the legacy of a life dedicated to Vision.

When I first saw it on the DVD shelf at the library, I thought, "Oh, another bag lady movie." But the blurb on the case made it look different. And it is. Maggie is a compelling case study. "Mild schizophrenia" is what she says her diagnosis is. But that doesn't wrap it up. It's her smile, her cheerful reaction to her disastrous situation, her playful imaginings, that distinguish her. We might pass off her fantasy life, where she dwells in a world of demigods and movie stars, as a weakness revealing her inability to deal with her personal problems. But it turns out that there's an element of truth to her stories. Then, an uncanny incident of clairvoyance makes you wonder. Is she as crazy as she seems? Or is she in contact with some cosmic order of reality? Is her mythologizing of the people in her past an escapism or a reaching out to a more elevated essence of things? We all fantasize, if only while dreaming. Maggie's commitment to fantasy is scary to contemplate, but only different in intensity to what we all indulge in. Film maker Michel Negroponte approaches his subject sympathetically, with admirable control and lack of judgmentalism. His documentary is skillfully structured without calling attention to the techniques employed. He gives us Maggie, and she haunts us.

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy takes its place -- alongside the symphonies of Beethoven, the pyramids of Egypt, and the original books by J.R.R. Tolkien -- on the list of the greatest creative achievements in human history.