Known for his abstraction, experimentation, and distinct style of imagery, it is easy to think of Brakhage not as a director, but as an artist who specializes in creating visual poems. He doesn't do himself justice when he says, "I aspire to a visual music, a 'music' for the eyes". '23rd' is fairly representative of his style, but darker than others I've seen. It includes trademarks of hand painted frames, close-up images of nature that become patterns rather than being especially recognizable as what they are, tidbits of his home-life (he's given up on cameras, so the previous two are only found in earlier works), and other Brakhage standards, but it also contains an atypical motif of brief images of WWII footage/stills. Being a response to how the Vietnam war affected Brakhage and his family, this film is more aggressive than other Brakhage works. David E. James examined this piece in his book, "Allegories of Cinema"; saying,
Brakhage chooses to keep his visual art silent despite an appreciation for music. The absence of any sound allows one to focus on form and image, and allows each frame to issue its own weight rather than relying on musical cues. That said, it is not imperative to view any of the multitudes of silent Brakhage films in utter silence.
The film starts with text, then images of motion. Quickly a new layer is added to the mix. We see single shots (perhaps just a single frame) of Death in various guises which are followed by long pauses of blackness. It is like blinking in reverse -- like you are in a void, but must occasionally view (not shut out) the horrors around you. There are bombs, battles, horses, artillery fire, and there is blackness. Sometimes there are several frames of moving images instead of a still. Sometimes a color -- instead of blackness -- fills the screen between the interrupts. This and the uneven pace keeps the viewer on edge. It is a visual clash echoing war.
We see footage of writing throughout the film. There are points where the writing is harshly scratched directly out of the negative -- making a jumping almost illegible message -- and times where a hand is writing a letter. In the latter case, the camera stays so close that only a few words can be seen at one time, and the camera pans around the page to reveal bits of meaning out of sequence. Single words or phrases become secondary imagery; both conveying the visual of the acquiring the word, and the mental picture the word conveys. The word "Light" comes to us in this way.
Side Note: Somewhere around this point, as I adjusted to the lack of rhythm in the film, I found myself acquiring a mental soundtrack. It was as if my brain felt a need to fill the void of aural input. The two recurring themes to my internal audio were Throbbing Gristle's "2nd Annual Report" (particularly for versions of "Slug Bait"), and the vocal and guitar sections of Jimi Hendrix's "1983...(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)".
Conflicts abound in juxtapositions such as watching a letter of pain sorrow get written, and then jumping to a sleeping child (I believe it was Stan's own child). The screen begins to give way to more motion in longer time spans, but the flashes to solid states continue. Montages of painted frames come into play with jittery action and dark colors centering on black, brown and red. We see familiar human icons of previous wars. Hitler. Churchill. Troops. There are sections where archival footage is painted over with dots, or seen only through a matrix of holes. There is an implication that things are confused and unclear. As a plane crashes at sea, there are long blank moments where we know the plane will crash, but we can't see what is happening. The screen becomes split into halves, then quadrants with different activity appearing in each sector, but sometimes overrunning its area of origin, or just emerging at once in two of the four sectors. There are images of cracked pigmentation that simultaneously look remind one of both parched, barren land and dried blood. Within this, we see footage of a hand writing "War is thought!" and other written messages as the film nears its conclusion. It ends with reminders of its beginnings, and flashes of white and black.
Over all, it is an interesting abstraction. It includes a conflict of images, confusion, disparity, and a generalized visual assault. It depicts tragedy, horror, indoctrination, revolt against the same, and conveys war as a chaos of abrupt and seemingly senseless action that affects a broad scope.
Extras:
- Online
Brakhage write-up. The bottom of this page links to the site
containing the next link.
- Fred Camper's selection of Brakhage stills
(all of Camper's site is interesting.
- Of particular note is his page on
favorite film
makers -- partially because it contains such an odd variety -- like
Otto Preminger *and* Jerry Lewis? AND Kenji Mizoguchi AND Kenneth Anger?
Huh?!?!).