Window Water Baby Moving

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.)

It took me nearly ten years to muster up the guts to actually sit through an entire viewing of Stan Brakhage's WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING.......... and my courage has been completely rewarded by it! Even in this time, when watching live births on TV is commonplace, Brakhage's film (then ground-breaking for 1959) on the birth of his first child takes that "miracle" of life to an exultant place beyond the merely visual or educational, and gives the viewer the truth of both love and art.

Warm skin-tones, loving hands on his pregnant wife Jane's stomach, water washing over expectant skin, eyes, smiles, and the clearly visible movement of a child in the womb through the protruding abdomen eventually give way to extremely graphic, though emotionally and viscerally stunning shots of a child being born. All the pain, commitment, necessity, care and truth (the WHOLE truth!!!) involved in the before, during and after stages of becoming a part of this world are fully documented by Brakhage the filmmaker and father. The compositioning, colours, movements, angles, sequencing and revelations ultimately forming an incredible visual poem on and about the love of a man and a woman, and the child they have created together. Made all the more powerful and impacting by the complete lack of sound; thereby letting the eye do the "reading".

I had never seen anything so breathtaking, eye-opening, informative, and completely uncensored, yet so fraught with beauty before I saw this film tonight. When Brakhage grasps his head and smiles so wonderously at the end I couldn't help but smile back for him. One creation spawning another, shared with us all.

10/10. A true miracle.

Some amazing footage of the birth of Brakhage's 1st child, shot with great explicitness, with no holding back- we see the 'birth' of the placenta, the baby crowning, etc. And while this is as explicit a birth as I've seen, the setting (at home) and the feeling of intimacy make it anything but clinical, or exploitive. It's really quite sweet.

On the other hand, Brakhage's insistence on rapid jump cuts, self-consciously oblique angles, etc worked in the other direction, pushing me away from a straightforward emotional experience. Which was, of course part of the intent. In making it not a documentary, but a subjective, somewhat surreal film, it seemed to be trying to go beyond a simple well-made telling. For me that worked well at times, but at others I'll admit to longing to finding the effects frustrating and not understanding exactly what they were trying to communicate emotionally or intellectually.

Beyond it's merits as a film, it was also important in that this kind of footage simply didn't exist at the time. It was initially seized by the Kodak lab, and Brakhage had to get a note from the doctor involved explaining it wasn't pornography (!). The film was part of the beginning of the movement towards accepting childbirth as beautiful and without need to be hidden, that fathers can and should be in the room to witness and take part, and that big white hospitals aren't the only place to have a baby. So it had an impact on a social as well as a cinematic level.

"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