Customer Reviews

Begotten [VHS]

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Is it compelling? Very. Is it arty? Often. Is it atmospheric? Indubitably. Is it entertaining? Rarely, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. "Begotten," a wildly inventive low budget film imagined and subsequently lensed by E. Elias Merhige will leave a lasting scar on anyone who watches his nightmarish vision. The celluloid equivalent of a bad dream best forgotten, Merhige's pet project continues to mark its viewers; I occasionally hear people discussing this movie even though it came out over ten years ago. No matter what you come away with after watching "Begotten," you will remember it for ages to come. Nothing approaches its visceral power, its unshakable commitment to weirdness, and its disgustingly haunting imagery. Yes, "Begotten" is all of these things to some and much less to many. I have seen it and still cannot define exactly what I saw or successfully integrate the various scenes into a coherent whole. Perhaps subsequent viewings will uncover a few more details, but I somehow rather doubt that it will. I hope it will be enough to cryptically smile and nod sagely in lieu of explaining the plot the next time someone I know mentions this film. If I ever have to explicate on Merhige's monster to save my life, I could be in a heap of trouble.

What is "Begotten"? It is roughly eighty minutes of a black and white movie showing scenes of mutilation, madness, and murder. The whole thing deals with a sort of primordial or futuristic creation/death ritual carried out between the gods and mankind, or at least I think it does from the few articles I have read about the movie. Probably the easiest scenes to discern are the opening ones, where the camera reveals a twitching creature with a substance disturbingly comparable to blood pouring out of its mouth. With some sort of razor, the being cuts open its own abdomen (in chunky detail) in order to give birth to a new life form. This new goddess and a weird creation coughing up what looks like a piece of meat go forth to encounter shambling primitives who eventually beat these creatures to death. The whole film moves at a snail's pace, with many of the later scenes nearly impenetrable to the eye even on a DVD transfer.

Far from being filmed in glaring color reminiscent of an episode of the Brady Bunch, "Begotten" uses a complicated technique to create a type of black and white picture rarely if ever seen by this viewer. The film employs deliberate scratches on the negative and some sort of treatment that makes the unearthly images contained within glow with a sickly light. There isn't a whit of discernable dialogue in the whole movie, with the only sounds being a discordant drone punctuated by occasional rattles, labored breathing, chimes, and the sounds of water. The sun rises and sets with alarming regularity, but this hint at the passage of time provides no respite for the viewer as the nightmare unfolds onscreen. I could so easily dismiss "Begotten" as utter garbage except for one niggling concern: I could rarely take my eyes off the television screen. What IS going on here? Who knows, but it carries an appeal similar to a car accident on the freeway.

Merhige should receive a compliment for at least trying to accomplish something different with this movie. I'm not surprised in the least to learn that Marilyn Manson retained his services to direct one of his music videos, either. In short, if "Begotten" isn't the strangest, eeriest thing you will ever watch, you have explored bleaker vistas than I. I should conclude with an apology for speaking about this film by using so many superlatives, but watch it and see why I did so.

It's midnight and I am hungry so I sit down on the couch with a bowl of cereal and the VHS jumps into the first scene.

For ten minutes my cereal just sat there in the milk, I couldn't touch it, didn't even want to look at it, I just stared at the television, slackjawed and silent. I can't even explain what I was thinking. This 78min black and white is in short about the death of God (God kills Itself to give birth to another), the rise and death of Mother Earth, the birth and demise of Man, and the manipulation of man by other creatures on Earth.

The movie was not supposed to be entertaining, and it wasn't; yet, there is this indelible fascination to keep watching. The film used in taping, is in itself art. It is something called speckled chiaroscuro, which in short looks like vintage black and white, along with deliberate scratches and printed dust. It succeeds in leaving nothing short of mere imagination for the viewer to deal with - I couldn't discern what exactly I was experiencing, apart from my own wandering thoughts lost in the scenes portraying death, mutilation, murder... and a continual living pulse; a rythmic trance of life and death.

The sound effects were eerie, and equally horrific as were the actors themselves while both were displaced within the quivering scenes that unfortunately seemed to drag on forever. Perhaps that is my only complaint. The scenes were long, though they seemed to dig deeper into my counscience each moment that I spent dazing into the catacombs of horror and time. So I am sure there was a reason behind the madness.

I won't reccomend this to anyone unless I have had a lengthy conversation with you and know your boundaries. But if you scroll through Amazon and see this film in the same neighborhood of movies that interest you, those that are not your typical Hollywood crap, and actually push you to confront that which you believe to already know; then yes, see if you can rent it. I won't reccomend it, but won't quit my synopsis without adding that everyone who trully sees, should watch this movie at least once.

"Like a flame burning away the darkness
Life is flesh on bone convulsing above the ground"

BEGOTTEN is without any doubt one of the most radical and fascinating experimental films ever to appear on the screen. Repeated comparisons to David Lynch's dark masterpiece ERASERHEAD are, in my opinion, only partially right, because besides the fact that both movies are shot in b&w they have only the great and carefully designed soundtrack in common. BEGOTTEN takes place in a whole other ballpark and there's no Lynchian touch in Merhige's work at.
At the beginning we witness in a very insistent scene GOD KILLING HIMSELF with a razorblade (he looks a little bit like Marylin Manson, no joke !). The result of this suicide is the birth of MOTHER EARTH who is then wandering around the earth and giving birth to her SON OF EARTH - FLESH ON BONE. Only a few moments later the two find themselves being kidnapped, raped and tortured by a bunch of disguised creatures (wearing coats like the Sandpeople in "Star Wars" !) and finally MOTHER EARTH and her SON got killed and all life on the planet stands still and flowers wither. But then there grows new life and we see MOTHER EARTH reborn and once again on her way to her journey with new hope.
Well, this is my try of a synopsis of the film. Edmund Elias Merhige who not only directed but also wrote, produced, edited and photographed the film delivered a tremendous piece of art which is both enthralling and highly poetic. He spend nearly four years only to create this nightmarish visual style with the effect of grained images and stylized footage that often reminds me of old silent pictures or documentary footage from WW2.
The soundtrack is, as mentioned above, made with great meticulousness. For example: in the scenes where God is killing himself we only hear waterdrops (or something like that) and the heavy breathing of the creature as well as the sound of the razorblade cutting through the flesh (very exiting and haunting !). Later on when MOTHER EARTH is travelling around we hear naturally sounds like windblowing or chirping and footsteps and breathing of the various participants onscreen. Some synthie sounds intensify the cruel atmosphere in the torture scenes and creat a state of melancholia in the scenes of the rebirth.
The transfer of the movie is well done. The extras on the DVD are a little bit of a letdown: no audio commentary, a dissapointing and unnecessary still archive (just push the "pause" button on your remote and you'll get the same effect !), and a really weird trailer. The booklet though is great: it contains not only a helpful introduction to the movie by Scott MacDonald but also an interview with director Merhige as well as a short biography of the latter.
Being one of the most important films of the last twenty years BEGOTTEN is highly recommended and is definitely a must-see !

Yes, this is a very interesting looking movie. And the soundtrack is great. The sound effects really add a lot to the movie as well; in some scenes (if you choose to call anything in this movie a "scene") it is totally necessary to rely upon these effects if you hope to have any clue whatsoever what is going on.
And yet there is no way I'd watch Begotten again, and it's not because it's a haunting vision that tore into the fabric of my soul or anything. I would never watch this again because it's pretentious and, frankly, rather boring.
It really is a great-looking movie. The opening few minutes with God Killing Himself doing what his name implies, and the subsequent birth and impregnation of Mother Earth, is quite compelling. Then the movie slows...to...a...crawl. This is also around the time Elias Merhige begins to throw in student film conventions like shots of clouds passing and the sun (moon?) setting. And this is also about the time he decides that every scene must last FOREVER. Actions such as stabbings/clubbings go on and on, with nothing to keep up viewers' attention. The editing is absolutely leaden. Any of the infrequent quick cuts provide a brief moment of excitement (so those of you expecting a music video should look elsewhere). There's other problems. While establishing shots of windows may make sense in a more conventional film, they accomplish very little in such an overtly symbolic work. I fail to see what numerous shots of the walls of the house where God Kills Himself have to add to the movie.
In the end, this really comes off as the ultimate student film. Merhige clearly loves German Expressionist cinema (as further evidenced by his recent film Shadow of the Vampire). He copies the chirascuro visual style and the heavy symbolism, but I really don't feel like he had anything to say, other than something totally hackneyed like "man kills himself and his environment." And yet the resurrection ending doesn't correspond with this message, unless Merhige is saying something equally banal like "history repeats itself." Oh well, at least he's trying to say something.
I'd recommend checking out some classics of German Expressionism instead (Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and Nosferatu, for example). You'd have to be very patient or stubborn to enjoy this movie, though I don't doubt there are those who loved this. Try finding one of them that owns this and then convince them to let you watch the first twenty minutes. That's all you need.

I was not expecting what I saw on the screen when I popped this in the VCR (yes I actually rented a vhs copy from a great little local spacialty video rental place). I could barely make out what exactly the form was, but then realized it was this gruesome looking, twitching, convulsing being vomiting blood everywhere and then it began to cut itself open with a straight-razor. And then after dying, deficates on itself. This was the best part of the movie. Period. After this, a woman appears, spinning about, topless, with a Halloween masquerade mask on, and, um, arouses GOD and uses his, um, fluids to impregnate herself. The next oh, 40-60 (I'm guessing) minutes are pretty boring, although I could not take my eyes off the screen. It's really visually stunning, if you overlook the fact that half the time you have no idea what you are seeing. The seizuric man is a bit disturbing, and the fact that it takes the druidic beings half an hour to get him up a 7 foot hill was, well, irritating. I didn't really get the ending, and I suppose you need to interpret it for yourself, but some weird people with straw hats on a Indian reservation doesn't really make sense to alot of people. And, jeeze, did I had weird dreams after watching this.
I guess if you really love the avant-garde, this is a MUST SEE (must own a different story). However, if you are into the mainstream and must watch every new Jerry Bruckheimer film or if My Big Fat Greek Wedding was the greatest movie you've ever seen, this is definately not for you.

Elias H. Merhige, who has recently branched out into more accessible material with Cannes favourite 'Shadow of the Vampire', began his directorial career in 1991 with this little known and uber pretentious peice of religious symbolism Unashamedly avant-garde and unconventional, it both intrigues and entices certain viewers through technique that will undoubtedly alienate and turn off others. Filmed in black and white chiaruscuro the film is visually effective in that images are so often hard to define, whites and blacks running into one another or blurring completely and thus giving the impression of a rorschach ink blot in motion. Yet its lack of sound and leaden pacing will do nothing to convince viewers unfamiliar with what is going on on screen. Essentially an interpretation of various creation myths focusing on death, rebirth, the patterns these find in nature and in religion, the film follows the path of an immolated god reborn through his offspring.

Interpretations are going to be fairly free and numerous, depending upon the angle the viewer sees the film from. Religious parallels to pagan myths of death and renewel, and various biblical ideas of creation, destruction and the rebirth of god into humanity are all potential explanations. In this Merhige has perhaps created a blank canvas onto which we can paint with our imaginations a true coloured image of what is happening on screen, entrusting part of the filmmaking process to his audience every time they view.

On the other hand, it could be just a load of ridiculous, over stylised, unwatchable tosh.

From its opening images of God killing himself with a straight razor, Begotten is a viewing experience unparalleled in the history of cinema. Yet despite Susan Sontag acclaiming it as "one of the ten most important films of modern times" and being hailed by Time Magazine as "one of the ten best pictures of the 1991," E.E. Merhige's (Shadow of the Vampires, Suspect Zero) dialogue-free directorial debut has slipped into such obscurity that even bootlegged copies often fetch more than fifty dollars on the secondary market. However, despite its scarcity, this "metaphysical splatter film*" has not lost its ability to hit viewers like a wrecking ball to the spiritual gut.

According to Merhige, who spent eight to ten hours editing each minute of film to achieve its organic, grainy appearance, Begotten was made to feel "not as if it were from the twenties, not even as if it were from the nineteenth century, but as if were from the time of Christ, as if it were a cinematic Dead Sea Scroll that had been buried in the sands, a remnant of a culture with customs and rites that no longer apply to this culture, yet are somewhere underneath it, under the surface of what we call reality." This reference to that which exists beneath ordinary consciousness might call to mind the films of David Lynch, and it's no surprise that Begotten has been compared to Eraserhead, arguably Lynch's most bizarre and cosmically stark vision to darken celluloid. It is also intriguing to note that while Lynch is a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, Begotten was the product of Theatreofmaterial, a troupe who, along with Merhige, included actors and visual artists. Together, Theatreofmaterial spent over four months engaging in breathing exercises where they would "breathe to the point of hysteria and create these moments of panic," among other activities.

While it would be easy to interpret Begotten as a product of the modern American subconscious, as David Lynch's more nonlinear work could be interpreted, one should also take into consideration mythologies of the past. According to David and Margaret Leeming in A Dictionary of Creation Myths, dismemberment of a primordial being is an archetype found in both Babylonian and Norse creation stories. Among other archetypes are creation by secretion and creation by emergence, characteristics of both which can be found in Begotten, when after emerging from beneath the clothing of the deceased God, Mother Nature engages in a strange necro-sex act. In the next scene comes one of the most startling and beautiful images in the entire film: a pregnant Mother Nature rubbing her belly and standing beside an upright coffin, which vanishes just before the screen blackens and makes way for the birth of Son of Man - Flesh on Bone. From there, Mother Earth and Son of Man wander through a barren wasteland and encounter a group of nomadic beings. While the tribe initially praises the convulsive (both God and Son of Man flail like epileptics during most of their time onscreen) Son of Man, they begin to torture him in various acts that use up a hefty chunk of Begotten's 78-minute runtime.

Contributing to the spiritual dissonance of the film is the soundtrack, which is comprised solely of birds chirping, among other sounds of nature, and occasionally soft, almost choral strings. Perhaps employing such familiar sounds is among the primary reasons that the outlandish tale is so readily accepted by viewers. However, others are less convinced, often likening Begotten to an extended version of the infamous tape from The Ring. However, whether one falls into that group or not must be decided through firsthand experience, and regardless, Begotten is a film that must be experienced. It is a film that possesses the power to alter the internal mechanics of those who witness its terrors and ecstasies. In many ways it can be likened to the mythical Necronomicon, that elusive monument of horror that exists only in the mythologies of pop culture and H.P. Lovecraft. Only, this a nightmare document that actually exists, and for a price, may be possessed by anyone. To everyone, splatter fanatics and connoisseurs of quiet horror alike, this viewer welcomes you to the nightmare universe of Begotten, the ultimate straight razor to the cinematic eye.

This movie deserves either one star or five, so I've given it five. It's not as offensive as others have said because the images are so difficult to discern that one's imagination is forced to fill in the details. If gore and offal are what's desired, the viewer would be more satisfied with one of dozens of low-budget splatter flicks. Perhaps 'Begotten' shouldn't be considered a film at all, but a series of black-and-white art photographs arranged in a semi-random order. The picture on the cover is about as clear as they get. It has a plot and a story, but without the notes that are provided I doubt anybody could know what they are. I enjoy the movie for its extreme artfulness (artful in the sense of being a product of labor), but I haven't been able to watch the entire thing in one sitting. One must be in a certain sort of mood (chemically induced or not) for it.

i'm an art house type, but i think "begotten" pushes even my very few limits a little bit in terms of being too subjective. what happens is this:this bizarre woman creature thing is cutting herself for oh, about a half an hour, and then a bunch of druid type creatures drag around this weird little mutant dude around and seem to torture him? while he breathes nastily into the audio. there isn't any dialogue at all. this goes on. and on. and on. till the lady is prostrated with the mutant dude, and they keep getting shots of her (and his) genital areas. the movie eventually ends.

if this movie was meant to be a series of stills i'd want a photo album of it just because of the surreal, netherworld sort of flavor it has and i think it is worth watching (in intervals) just because of the atmosphere it creates, one of mythical something or other, but don't be misled by the pretentious into thinking this is some kind of masterpiece of so called "german expressionism" because it's in black and white and it feels kind of doomy. german expressionism doesn't have anything to do with this, unless you're straining real hard for an explanation as to what the hell it means and decide to come out of left field with a pseudo interpretation. this ain't the cabinet of dr. caligari, but students of film should buy it anyway.

Certain stories are better conveyed in black and white.

Emotionally and intellectually, we seem to process color differently. Consider the failure of the shot-for-shot color remake of Hitchcock's iconic black and white classic "Psycho." Ironically, films in black and white can seem more real, urgent or even emotional.

"BEGOTTEN," the spectacular black and white first film by E. Elias Mirhage, the director of "Shadow of a Vampire," defies description and must be experienced.

Against black, these lines begin the movie:

Language bearers, Photographers, Diary makers
You with your memories are dead, frozen
Lost in a present that never stops passing
Here lives the incarnation of matter
A language forever.

What follows is about 80 minutes of grainy, high-contrast, mostly dark, nightmarish images that shimmer a hallucinatory chiaroscuro sheen. Human creature, perhaps a mother goddess, gives birth to a tremulous offspring and then mother and child are ravished and buried by primitively cloaked figures and the earth is renewed on their corpses.

Creation legends and myths are seemingly combined with Messianic motifs in mysterious and seductive images. The camera is jerky and the film is scratched and dirty. Bereft of dialogue, the soundtrack is alive with a mix of wind chimes, water, faint bird songs, thunder, crickets, heartbeats, and snippets of music -- mostly chants.

When the film was first released in 1990, it garnered extraordinary reviews from heavyweight critics and essayists. Susan Sontag called it "One of the most important films of modern times." Richard Corliss, in Time magazine, wrote: "Nobody will get through 'Begotten' without being marked." This grotesque and unforgettable film shines a light on those dark recesses -- out of time and place -- where we hold our most ancient collective memories, fears and desires. Extras include a fascinating souvenir booklet, the original trailer and an archive of stills.

Not for everyone.