Window Water Baby Moving

Window Water Baby Moving (1962)

**** (out of 4)

I'm not quite sure where the line is drawn when it comes to art and a simple home movie but this film is certainly the best of both. Director Brakhage made this eleven-minute film dealing with the birth of his first child. The mixture of something beautiful like art and something ugly like a home movie is rather interesting for the story as there's a lot of ugliness that goes along with childbirth but at the same time there's also something beautiful about it and this film perfectly captures both. Nothing during the birth sequence is kept to the imagination as the director gets the camera very close to where all the action is going on and he doesn't shy away from showing anything. It's rather amazing that his wife was such a good sport because there had to be times where he was in the way of the birth just to get certain shots. The film shows a lot of this ugly, bloody mess but it's also done very beautifully. The birth shots and edited with shots of Brakhage and his wife loving on one another and the way this editing is done really captures the love and affection the director must have been feeling.

While many women cringe at the thought of child birth and would never want to go through it, other women love children and are more than delighted to deliver a baby. I am a male, so I don't really have a true opinion, but I would really like to have a child someday. This film is essentially the birth of experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage's first child. We witness his daughter being born without the sugarcoating or hiding the act. We see the birth in all of its glory. Many viewers will be nauseated with the sight, but others will be honored. This film is amazing because we see life actually being given and it is amazing. The human body is very complex, and the birthing process doesn't hide this fact. This is a film that people will watch for the ending. The ending makes the whole process worth it as the child turns out beautiful and We as viewers are treated to a loving sight of the child living and very healthy looking. This is the sweet side of Stan Brakhage. Usually his films involve the viewers in the difficulty of trying to figure out what he is trying to say, but this film is almost like a reward to the viewer. Children are beautiful and it is strange to realize that in twenty years, they will be running the country.

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

"Window Water Baby Moving" is possibly influential experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage's most well-known film. In this masterpiece, he simply documents the birth of his first child. And it is possibly the greatest film he's ever made.

To be fair, I haven't seen Brakhage's "Dog Star Man", which also looks like a masterwork, but whether or not it is truly his best film, it is still a beautiful film.

Stan Brakhage uses his normal fast paced, experimental editing that has been used in his other documentary works (ex. "The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes"), as well as some very artistic, and highly experimental, camera-work. Brakhage's documentary films aren't just simple home movies, but great works of art, just look at the film! Every shot is an artistic masterpiece, and it is a truly great document of life and love.

Although the film uses highly graphic imagery to tell it's story, it is really a sweet document. Yes, the birth is shown in EXTREME detail, but, at the end, you see how loving these new parents are. The mother (Jane Brakhage) holds her newborn in her arms, and the father (Stan Brakhage) looks greatly excited and happy, he's hoping up and down, with a great smile on his face.

Stan Brakhage has proved himself, in my opinion, to not only be one of the great experimental filmmakers, but of of the great documentary filmmakers, as well.

I saw this short a few days ago at the Rotterdam Film Course for the International Rotterdam Film Festival and it blew me away. I had read some information about this short and wasn't that impressed, after all there are loads of programmes nowadays on TV that handle this subject as entertainment fodder.

What I did not know up front was the fact that Stan Brakhage never uses sound. That's probably where the power lies. The pictures were so incredibly strong and vibrant because of lighting, color and the sheer graphic visions Brakhage presents to the viewers that sound would have been distracting to say the least.

The pictures are not for the easily spooked persons or women who are thinking about having a baby. This is a straightforward account of child birth with all the gore, blood and beauty that accompanies it. It opened my eyes, 'cause I had never seen anything like it before in my life, and it is after all the most natural happening in the world.

After 13 minutes you will be left breathless.

10/10

You ever see that cliché happening, if not in TV or movies then in real life, of the husband documenting every single excruciatingly painful but miraculous happening that is birth? Apparently, according to Stan Brakhage on the DVD this film is on, this trend was at least in part inspired by his original efforts. Shot on a minimal budget (save for what it must've cost to have a birth in the Brakhage household as opposed to the hospital), this film IS the difference between a simple 'home movie' and something close to the most personal art possible. Documentary film-making has always been about a subject that compels the filmmaker enough to get hours and hours of footage down. That here Brakhage, who often does montage work of paintings and the like, is focusing his subject matter on his wife, and his child just itching to get out, in all graphic detail, is astounding. For the 60's, when this was first released, it was probably a lot more shocking than now.

Not to say that the film isn't shocking, but it is on a different level than what you might see on one of those 'birth' shows on one of the Discovery channels. The way certain things are presented in the film are surprising, and (if you're a guy like me) definitely unnerving. But Brakhage somehow makes his film almost beautiful in a way by cutting the film's subject matter in half, so to speak. The first half is just the mother of his child, in a bathtub, feeling the baby kicking, et all. It's really just a great montage of the woman as a whole, nothing unseen, with the belly getting the most screen-time aside from the mother's face and genitals. Then comes the second part, the birth. Basically, if you still wonder how it works, in near unflinching detail, watch the film. That it is presented in such a grainy 16mm kind of filming, and still using the intense, mad montage of Brakhage's two cameras on her (I think it was two, one more close to the 'action' than the other).

And when it ends, it is, like all (practically) successful births, a miracle in and of itself. So much happens within these 13 minutes of film than, in a way, it feels longer. I loved how it dealt with its subject matter, which could be very tricky, and messy (the latter of which is very true), and was still a wonder for the eyes. It lacks music, which is sort of a pro and a con for me- you could do with some music, make it even more home movie-like. As it is, Brakhage has one of his most notorious- and possibly best- works here, and maybe the only film that makes that bridge between a health class and film class in school.