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.

Before I begin this review I must mention that this film is absolutely not for the faint of heart.

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'The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes' was directed by experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage - arguably one of the most creative and original filmmakers of all time.

This film consists entirely of footage of real life autopsies being performed and as a result is extremely graphic, but is nevertheless an interesting look at the human body and how autopsies are performed.

I should also note that the film is completely silent, which I feel only adds to the uneasy feeling while watching.

Overall, I recommend this to anyone interested in this subject matter or film in general who can stomach 31 minutes of corpses having autopsies performed on them.

7/10

Now obviously, this film may sound silly. The film itself is basically a 40 minute film without narrative or opinion. It is simply a film depicting autopsy on dead bodies. At first this sounds gross and disgusting, but in reality, the skin of dead bodies are really nothing much other than dirt, or at least soon to be. The idea of this being gross can be pulled out of the fact that these bodies were once alive. Yes, we see images of the insides of their bodies. We see their brains and skull. We see the cuts being placed on their skin and then being opened to reveal a massive doorway to intestines, bone, blood,liver, veins, and other things. We do not know what kinds of things that these bodies did when they were alive and moving. We are not even shown what their facial features are like really. We just see their bodies being opened and examined. Stan Brakhage, an experimental filmmaker, doesn't consider that his audience may want to know these things. Or maybe he does but is not interested enough to show us. This way, we can leave our concerns behind and hope to get something out of these gruesome things. We may or may not, but the idea of this sort of meaning is enough to watch it more than once, if not to see if we react or see something differently.

(I watched this film as part of the DVD short film collection of Stan Brakhage entitled, BY BRAKHAGE: AN ANTHOLOGY.)

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.