The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes

This 30 minute documentary on three human autopsies is one of the most disturbing yet intruiging things that I have ever seen on film. If you can imagine it, they show it. Everything but the corpses faces are shown. But I am willing to bet that if Brakhage was allowed to show the faces he would have. This movie delves into the idea of human curiosity and vision like never done before. A thinker.

I know it is a violation of the terms and conditions to focus on other user-comments but 'The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes' demands an examination that acknowledges reception above all other interpretative modes. I find it fascinating that many of the respondents interpret this film as something more than simply the photographing of a number of autopsies. First, this demonstrates a desire to bestow meaning on anything, whether it is elicited or not. Secondly, it exhibits a desire to deify anything created by an acknowledged artist-in this case avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage-regardless of its true material worth. Ultimately, I think this is the wrong way to approach this film, which is simply the filming of a series of autopsies, nothing more, nothing less. Brakhage has stated that the metaphorical hermeneutic code is endemic in the material. This is true, but the notion that a dead body being stripped of its components says anything significant about the nature of life and humanity is highly contentious. Brakhage invests no artistic design in his film; he simply photographs the morgue workers in operation. Yes, we see imagery that is at turns repulsive and often saddening, but would we imagine anything else. It might be argued that, given the film's title, Brakhage is trying to demystify death. However, films like these are de rigueur in medical classes and therefore this 'scene' is not hidden from the world. People actually deal with it everyday. Those who have no exposure to the dead or the human anatomy will most likely have no interest in the material. So, once again, what is this film's worth? It is not artistic (despite other users trying to consign their own aesthetic design on the film), it is not useful, and it fails as a demystification of death or the human body. Ultimately, 'The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes' is a failure as a film and offers only limited interest as a curio.

Perhaps I'm misattributing my own scientific, atheistic tendencies, but I've found that many of Stan Brakhage's early films seem to argue for Man as an animal, an organic vessel with primitive urges. 'Window Water Baby Moving (1959)' documented the act of parturition in unflinching detail, depicting childbirth, not as the "miracle" suggested in more romantic sources, but as a perfectly natural, albeit remarkable, mammalian event. 'Thigh Line Lyre Triangular (1961)' did something similar, but this time clouded by the subjectivity of human perception. 'Mothlight (1963)' likened humans to moths, attracted to the flickering lights of a cinema screen as an insect is to a lightbulb. No film achieves this aim more effectively than the blunt, cheerless silence of 'The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes (1971).'

The film's title is a literal translation of the Greek word from which "autopsy" is derived. The 32-minute film was photographed at the Allegheny Coroner's Office in Pittsburgh, and documents the routine dissection of cadavers. This isn't for the faint-hearted. Brakhage often zooms in for shaky, unclear close- ups of the patients' bodily organs, removing the viewer's customary frame of reference, and leaving abstract images that are unsettlingly disconnected from our everyday experience. Skin is peeled back from the anonymous faces, organs are removed. The camera occasionally lingers on the patients' genitalia. In life, these were organs of sexual attraction, upon which so much importance was placed; now we see that they are merely insignificant pieces of flesh. Only death, it seems, can bring such things into perspective.

As a zoology student, I've dissected frogs, pigeons, rats. The internal layout of a rat isn't all that different from that of a human (except, most noticeably, for the testicond gonads). At the end of the autopsy procedure, we are left with an empty vessel. Everything that makes us human – emotion, intelligence, culture – is regulated by the brain, and, once that dies, we're just another conglomeration of organic molecules. Indeed, were we ever anything else? 'The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes' was not an easy nor enjoyable film to watch, but it did force me to see the true state of the human condition: that we're animals, nothing more, and that ultimately we're all destined for the operating table.

The titles comes from the literal translation for the Greek word 'Autopsy". And that's exactly what this film is . 32 minutes of intense, hand-held photographing of several autopsies in extremely explicit detail.

While the film is, by nature, shocking, and sometimes hard to watch, it's far from exploitational or sensationalistic. It invites us to meditate on life, death, the body, what miracles we all are, how fragile we all are, how alone we all are in the end, and yet how alike we all are. What is a human? What were these people like in life? Are all we are really just the blobby masses of brain we see being removed, leaving only empty skull cavities? Why is the film stomach turning? Why is it so hard to look at what is inside us all? Brakhage raises all these questions, and they are valuable and unsettling to consider.

That said, for me, the film could have been shorter. It started to feel repetitive, which I'm sure was part of the intent (watching ourselves become inured to images that only minutes earlier seemed deeply disturbing), but there was a point near the end where I started to feel I had gotten what I was going to already, including that last idea.

This film is a truly artistic mastery of the form. Brakhage has succeeded in taking images, that at times can be gruesome, and combined them into a dance of sorts. His mastery of camera movement and editing have created a work that despite it's grotesque imagery, is exciting to look at. The vivid colors, and smooth motion he achieved have a soothing feeling to the viewer, rather than shocking. Through his elegance behind the camera, Brakhage manages to captivate the viewer, not with the images that he shows, rather with the pacing and and style of his work. The choice of no soundtrack either, adds to this trance-like effect experienced from this film. Overall a 10 rating and a masterpiece of Avant-Garde Cinema.