Customer Reviews

Decasia: The State of Decay - A Film by Bill Morrison

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This is a beautiful film. It is not a narrative movie, and has no plot structure at all. I first came across it by accident, while flipping through channels late at night, and became completely entranced. It is like looking at a fascinating, kinetic, abstract painting set to music.

What director and editor Bill Morrison has done is create an hour-long meditation on life and death, using found, early 20th Century filmed images on decayed film stock- and uses the effects of the decay itself as a medium to convey a sense of passing, of loss, to the images that someone at some time felt were worth recording. This visual approach is accentuated by the soundtrack, a sometimes haunting, sometimes throbbing symphony by Micheal Gordon, which never pauses between movements, but constantly evolves- some parts fade in while others fade out. This constant change adds to the overall feeling of impermanence that the film so well imparts.

There is a tremendous variety of images, and they are by no means all sad- whirling dervishes, geisha, nature shots, a birth (by C-section), a mine rescue, many scenes from silent movies; pillar-like nuns watching over a line of slowly marching, uniformed, Native-American students in some Southwestern convent school (this segment has a very creepy feel to it). The level of decay varies from scene to scene, flashing interference across the screen, sometimes making the film look almost like a negative, and sometimes taking a while for the image to become discernable. My favorite segment is a very long, slow shot of a distant airplane taking off and unloading a string of parachuters in the air, the camera slowly following them all the way to the ground. The soundtrack has evolved into a single, pulsating electric guitar, and the decay in the film has caused the empty sky to be a constantly changing, abstract field. It is hypnotic and beautiful.

I found the entire film hypnotic. Its message is that of transience, and the deterioration of the physical film itself is why it works so brilliantly. It feels somewhat Buddhistic, but no particular religion at all is espoused, just change, and loss. The sense of history- not only has the film been decomposed by time, but the images are so obviously from a distant era, and the technology itself so outdated- adds to this. There is a sadness to it, without being depressing.

I was also struck by the connections between chance and desicion in the making of the film. I found the overlapping of the random elements- the segments he happened to find, and the uncontrollable visual patterns of decay- with the control he exerted in their selection and sequencing and editing with the soundtrack, to be quite fascinating as art. These elements of chance combined with themes of change added another layer of complexity and meaning to the work, for me at least.

I was reminded of a book titled "Dice" by photographer Rosamond Purcell and Ricky Jay, who has written many books on gambling and magic, and has collected thousands of dice over the years. The older, celluloid dice in his collection had begun to decay in wildly unpredictable ways, so he invited Purcell to photograph them. The result is their book of close-up still-lifes of the rotting and collapsing dice, with essays by Jay on dice, gambling, and chance in general. A small, poetic, statement on a much smaller scale than Mr. Morrison's beautiful film, but somewhat in the same vein.

This film is not really for everyone. My wife, who said it reminded her of the world without her glasses, greatly admired the concept and intention, but found actually watching the movie a little "head-achey". I myself was thrilled when it became available on DVD. I find it to be not only technically, and musically fascinating, but spiritually moving, as well.

Although this will remind you of Begotten if you have seen that film, I found this to be much more intriguing than that film (which was very uneven, soaring high while occasionally bordering on tedious). The film also reminded me of Koyaanisquatsi and, believe it or not, some of the psychadelic sequences in Yellow Submarine! The soundtrack (it's very Phillip Glass) and the slow-motion effects are what are reminiscent of Koyaanisquatsi. Some of the sequences almost seem animated in the style of Yellow Submarine, looking as if they were animated pencil art you were watching (also reminded me of Bill Plympton's animated style). The images include amuzement park rides, miners pulling dead/injured workers from a mine shaft, a lakeside baptism, big city life, children being led through a monastary, etc. At 67 minutes long, it doesn't go on forever and those 67 minutes flew by for me. This is definitely not everyone's cup of tea, but if you appreciate unusual cinema, this hits the spot square on. It's hypnotic and captivating on many levels.

Is decay and discord beautiful? Does this movie explore our fascination with the analysis of destruction itself?

A dancer twirling sets a hypnotic mood and then a cloud of smoke or clouds is taken over by what appears to be modern art bubbles. Then from these bubbles, a beautiful woman quickly appears and then dissolves into a seascape.

Raindrops of decay fall onto the film as images keep you guessing. Are you viewing waterfalls or waves? Are butterflies dancing on the screen or is the film decaying in a unique way. Camels run from impending doom as the film deteriorates and tries to dissolve them into the sands of time. Ghostly ships glide through an ocean and strangely the decay looks like tornados attacking the ship. A man escapes drowning only to seem terrorized by his own disappearance into time.

The Basel Sinfonietta Orchestra sets the surreal mood and can at times set you up for terrifying thoughts. Is this a horror movie or a film's worst nightmare? Images of dancing in the sunlight are drenched in the horror of death, the death of a distressed image. The music deceives you into thinking every moment is filled with certain doom. What you are viewing is not what you are thinking. This then becomes an excellent study in perception. If you can pull back and view yourself while you view this movie, you will learn something new about yourself. There are a number of underlying concepts.

As ominous music turns sunny days into nights of hell, you are perpetually on the verge of horror. What will happen next? What image will disappear before your eyes? I enjoyed the variety of decay. Like a child curious about mold on bread I viewed this movie with childlike wonder. The way the timeworn archival stock disintegrates is truly fascinating.

Decasia keeps your attention because you never know what will happen next. The movie chews at the screen like a dragon with huge teeth and there are even images that look like dragon scales or murky monsters. Humor does appear now and then in an amusement park and while children are riding in a school bus.

The images I enjoyed most where the sections of film that turned into watery ponds. They seemed to be reflecting a story where raindrops play. The spinning wheels are at times hypnotic and the black-and-white images are stunning.

As the music reached a fever pitch, the discordant bliss can become a little overwhelming and the contrast between what you are actually viewing and the impending doom starts to bring you back to reality.

~The Rebecca Review

I came across this by chance and was completely startled by its somber tone and the dissolving images. Sensitive viewers might come away depressed by the haunting soundtrack of car brakes and detuned pianos (among other "instruments") and images destroyed by nitrate or warped by heat.

There's a palpable sense of loss here that reminds me of old buildings, forgotten cities, childhoods lived among dusty, deserted streets. This is a treat for any lover of art, painting, music or life.

DECASIA: THE STATE OF DECAY (Plexifilm), an experimental art film by Bill Morrison is edited entirely from bits and pieces of decomposed film found in neglected archives. Hallucinatory and haunting, the damaged images of places, people and events from times past are strange and out-of-context, but the brain tries to makes sense of them and the result is like a waking dream. Michale Gordon's innovative soundtrack of detuned instruments adds to the weird Dervish dance of dissolution.

Seems odd in 2007 to append to this DVD a rider "This is not a feature film," but so be it. Decasia is not narrative cinema, nor are most of the unearthed samples constituting its core DNA. It's raw eschatology, expertly compiled and edited; a core text, a meditation. It is gorgeous, portentous; a shimmering extract. However...

Decasia's most glaring problem is not its formalist reversion--Morrison is clearly celebrating sumptuous visual splendor, devoid of any historical or cultural underpinnings. There's nothing wrong with that; anonymity is part of the point. Rather, it's ineluctable evidence that we have not come terribly far in our level of filmic sophistication, since there is nothing in this work that could not have been realized in American independent film by 1970. And, surely it should have been. Perhaps it's a more a comment on desuetude than decay, if not on sheer intellectual laziness.

While the nitrate stock employed is virtually all pre-war, it bears repeating that the cinematic language is over 50 years old--Deren, Brakhage, Baillie, Jordan, Sharits, Conrad and all the usual suspects across the history of postwar art and experimental film pioneered these tropes. Most of them are long dead and their many imitators are long-forgotten. Obscurer still are these oxidized discards spliced by Morrison. Abraded, reticulated celluloid, solarized emulsions and melting anatomies afford us witness to a slow, gliding collapse. There's more than one nostalgia at work here.

As for Gordon's soundtrack, it owes very little to Glass, but a great deal to John Adams and especially Terry Riley, with whom he has performed. The patterned repetition and harmonic devices of the score were well-established as exemplars of Minimalism by the mid-Sixties; Penderecki, Ligeti and Xenakis also shout through the brass charts, and the glissandi of massed strings is heavily lifted from Gloria Coates. Overall Decasia should be seen as an exquisite, salutary homage, and highly recommended on that basis. It would fail if cast in any other light.

There is a humorous anecdote of two great photographers, Aaron Siskind and Frederick Sommer on a jaunt outside Jerome, Arizona. Aaron disappears over a hill with his camera. Hours later he returns with dozens of exposed rolls and finds Fred asleep in the car. He asks Fred if he's done any work and Sommer picks up a pile of discarded x-rays he'd found at an abandoned hospital nearby, declaring, (I paraphrase) "here are my images, already developed and printed!" Morrison's contribution occupies a kindred space. Like the recurring Mevlevi Dervish, it implies recirculation, balanced with, or set against, ephemerality.

This is film-making in a very pure form: abstract imagery with no hint of narrative, held together by some of the most difficult music ever written for film.
Bill Morrison worked with Michael Gordon to put images to a symphony that he was working on. Michael Gordon also, in part, wrote to the film in a true collaboration.
The film is composed of sections of old, decomposing celluloid: old films that are suffering from innatention, damp, heat, whatever it is that distresses celluloid film. These sections are beautifully cut together into a whirling, blurring mass of fractional image and abstract mess that provokes thought and poses more questions than it answers. Butterflies flit in and out of the negative to positive and back again; a boxer loses his arms in a sticky amorphous goo; a woman's face fleetingly appears, contorts into a hideous mask and is lost again...
The music underscoring this is compelling too. Sounding in places like Steve Reich - the motoric pulses - and in other places like Gloria Coates - the detuned strings, this is music about rotting, about the decay of tonal centres.
Do not miss this if you like experimental music or film.

a film about how film dies and forgotten memories.
Nothing lasts forever...

What is Decasia?

A quite strange experimental film mainly composed of partially decayed vintage film footages. Maybe Decasia can also be seen as the total antithesis of Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso. In other words Bill Morrison's Decasia isn't a joyful hommage to cinema...Instead,Decasia mourns the tragedies of our past, the innevitable deterioration of film and life itself through the esthetics of decaying celluloid.

I personally think that there's something deeply depressing about this film.Not because it reminds us of our own mortality (as far as I'm concerned, death is nothing more than a continuation of an everlasting atemporal cycle which I'm a part of. And there's nothing I can do about it.)..But because of the fragileness of memories,history and individuals.

For some strange reason, the unjovial music of this film (composed by Michael Gordon) reminded me of something reminiscent of the 'Climax Golden Twins'style(session 9) , only more orchestrated.

Old nitrate-based film stock rots. As it decomposes it gives off an acetic acid odor, and the process is called `the vinegar effect' by film preservationists. It also becomes encrusted with dirt and grime, develops holes and scratches. It's one of arts' most fragile mediums. Usually, when the decay is far enough advanced and the film stock can't be salvaged, it's tossed out.

Accompanied by Michael Gordon's concert of the same name, Bill Morrison's DECASIA is 70-minutes of blighted film stock rescued from the garbage bin and stitched together. DECASIA isn't going to appeal to most people, I think. On the interview Gordon mentions the `out of tune piano,' whisks rubbed on brake drums, and other such odd musical instruments he uses to add noise to things. The music, which dominated the show in the original presentation when the orchestra played live at a concert hall while the film was projected on a screen, is urgently pensive. There's a definite dirge-like quality to it, well in keeping with the images.

And these images certainly won't appeal to most people. The rescued film stock doesn't narrate a beginning-middle-end story. Rather, it creates a mood, relying more on juxtaposition than plot progression to deliver the goods. Although I can see what Morrison is striving for (helped that he talks about it on the radio clip,) namely decay and impermanence, I didn't get that deep into it. It simply didn't grab me. On the other hand, the film was entertaining as a work of abstract art. The patterns of crust and flares and nitrate smears make for interesting animation. Watching the old image emerge from and get swallowed by the eroded film was, at times, fascinating. An interesting experiment that works well enough, recommended if you're in the mood for an experimental film.

Having seen Lyrical Nitrate and been hypnotised by the beauty of it and of the artistry possible to be created out of found footage (even as it disintegrates), I bought DECASIA based on the reviews and in the hope that the same creative lightening would strike twice.

I was much disappointed.

The moments of "artistic" decay are few and far between. A previous reviewer pointed out (most poetically) the highlights of the film, but the majority of the film is endless -endless -endless clips of just poor quality footage.

To make matters worse, most of the clips, which went on far too long to hold interest, were actually slowed down to make them LONGER. Case in point is the whirling dervish footage, which not only is slowed down, but also repeated several times. Then there is the procession of camels which drag across the screen in slow motion to the point that I had to fast-forward just to get past them. Neither sequence, by the way, was particularly decayed or showed any damage of note; certainly nothing to merit slowing them down to such extents.

Likewise, a procession of schoolchildren through a convent garden is slowed to such an excruciating crawl that one actually misses the fact that this scequence IS damaged until you speed it up.

My other complaint (and an artistic mis-step on the part of the film-maker) is the fact that black-and white film stock was used instead of color. As Lyrical Nitrate demonstrated, part of the artistic value of decayed nitrate (even if it was a "black & white" film) is the palette of color produced by the chemical reaction of the film stock.

Lost are the yellows, oranges, rusts, browns and reds which might have lent some genuine visual interest to this otherwise rather bland collage.

I personally would not recommend this film and would instead direct interested parties to the vastly superior Lyrical Nitrate.