Archive: Book Reviews, November 2003
Essential Brakhage: Selected Writings on Filmmaking
By Stan Brakhage
Kingston: Documentext, 2001. ISBN 0-929701-64-X. 21 illustrations, 232pp. $18.00 (pbk)
A Review by Liza Palmer, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
An editor of a compilation of written works is much like a curator of an art show: a good one can help you to appreciate the familiar, and navigate the new. But it is no easy task to provide context for a body of writing usurped from its original circumstance -- especially when that body of writing belongs to Stan Brakhage, avant garde filmmaker and theorist. Brakhage's career spans nearly fifty years, and has produced such seminal, ground-breaking films as Anticipation of the Night (1958), Dog Star Man (1961-1964), and Window Water Baby Moving (1959). His films have challenged the status quo of perception, and have courted controversy among filmmakers, scholars, and viewers alike. However, his contribution to filmmaking is undeniable -- one need only look at a Martin Scorsese or Oliver Stone film to recognize his influence. Whether you love Brakhage or despise him, he remains so central to the avant garde film movement within the United States that he is hard to ignore.
With well over 350 films to his credit, Brakhage is considered to be an unusually prolific filmmaker; but, as Essential Brakhage proves, he is an equally prolific writer. An admirable collection of essays, shooting scripts, and musings, Essential Brakhage represents a second chance at some rare works of Brakhage, previously available only in select editions or limited runs, which, needless to say, are priced for the collector's market these days. Gaining selected access to such unique pieces as Metaphors on Vision and A Moving Picture Giving and Taking Book is reason enough to add this book to your film library.
With Brakhage's moving manifesto "Metaphors on Vision," a piece which aptly begins Essential Brakhage, we have the laying-down of the gauntlet that was to alter so irrevocably the practice of film: "Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective. An eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception" (12). In all of Brakhage's subsequent works, both film and otherwise, he has returned to this theme of unmediated perception, and has become an inspirational -- and charismatic -- iconoclast of filmmaking rules and standards. His advice to budding filmmakers in A Moving Picture Giving and Taking Book:
My first instruction, then: if you happen to have a light meter -- give it away… otherwise: give over reading this further and get on with the game of numbers you're playing and its absolute sets of what is scene: for I am going on, from here, with seeing -- any/everyone's ultimate gift to the motion picture medium (106).
To editor McPherson's credit, it is intriguing to trace the trajectory of Brakhage's views on filmic perception across the body of his written work. It comes as no surprise, reading such pieces as "Metaphors on Vision," "The Seen," and "Poetry and Film" back-to-back, that Brakhage has now almost completely abandoned representational filming via a camera in favor of a more direct engagement with the film medium -- painting on film stock.
However, Essential Brakhage, while providing a good overview of Brakhage's thoughts and theories of film, is not necessarily for the novice. Lack of a significant biography of Brakhage within this compilation could pose a problem for those readers hoping to connect with him for the first time. So much of his life and past experiences are invested in his films and writings; without benefit of a biographical account or a working knowledge of his films, much of the significance of such pieces as "Notes on Anticipation" might be lost. Furthermore, there is little mention of Jane Brakhage Wodening, his first wife, who was so integral to the development of Brakhage's early film aesthetic, which characterized such classics as The Weir-Falcon Saga (1970), Sirius Remembered (1959), and his 8mm series of Songs. Indeed, Essential Brakhage, while a welcome addition to the Brakhage bibliography, tends to whitewash, or revise, those very aspects of his life which make him such a fascinating figure in the film world.
To be sure, Essential Brakhage wants a stronger editor-figure, like P. Adams Sitney or Robert Haller -- two respected film scholars (and Brakhage experts) who worked very closely with him on Metaphors on Vision and Brakhage Scrapbook, respectively. Both Sitney and Haller establish and maintain a presence in these influential works, intervening through interviews and analysis, to infuse the material with context. What results is a true negotiation of Brakhage's place in the pantheon of film -- with equal parts admiration and scepticism.
However, Essential Brakhage is not totally without merit -- far from it. The revised and updated "Selected Film Annotations" and "Selected Bibliography," courtesy of Marilyn Jull Brakhage, his second wife, will be a valued resource for Brakhage scholars and enthusiasts. As Brakhage himself relates in "Poetry and Film": "I've written a lot, I've spoken a lot, I've tried to make talk into as much integrity as possible" (191). McPherson's selection of Brakhage's written works is testament to this.