Begotten (1989)

[StevePulaski]

Begotten (1989)
Directed by: E. Elias Merhige

One of the many haunting images in E. Elias Merhige's Begotten.

Rating: ★★

NOTE: This film was recommended to me by Dennis P. for "Steve Pulaski Sees It," a yearly event where I take recommendations from readers.

There are films that are objectively difficult to analyze and review in the conventional sense. I was at quite a quandary trying to review August Underground, a seldom-seen, scuzzy mockumentary posing as an authentic snuff film. I didn't even assign a conventional star rating to The Human Centipede (First Sequence), yet I chalk that move up to my more naive and inexperienced days. Now I'm faced with E. Elias Merhige's Begotten, a mystifying piece of experimentation I was recommended for the month of "Steve Pulaski Sees It," which leads me to contemplate putting in some sort of formal disclaimer the next time I so broadly ask for requests.

I kid, to a degree. Begotten is a strange piece of history. Conceived by Merhige as a theater show, he opted for film in order to fully realize his murky vision. The film was made in 1989 for less than $40,000, per reports, but wasn't released until 1991, through festivals that managed to receive just enough critical attention it became somewhat known. It did make it to home video, but it might be easier to find definitive meaning in the film than it would be to obtain a first edition VHS copy. Begotten is bereft of dialog or anything resembling a plot, and its grainy, ungainly black-and-white images of blood and brutality will find a way to brand themselves into your retina. At only 78 minutes, it's a chore to sit through, but one that's anarchic disregard for formula and cohesion makes it an enigma worth discussing.

Densely allegorical, the film begins with a figure, identified as God, disemboweling himself, leaving nothing to the imagination in the process. Subsequently, Mother Earth emerges from the entrails and inseminates herself with the seed of God's corpse. Much of the film is discombobulated footage showing the pilgrimage by Mother Earth and the offspring through a barren landscape where total agony and pain await them at the hands of a nomadic tribe.

This is all more linear than it sounds, for the abstract nature of Merhige's visual style leaves a lot to the imagination, save for much of the violence. It draws on a copious amount of Christian and Slavic doctrine, and its inclusion of famous biblical figures at their most heinous suggests a human race content with gutting and literally desecrating their creators with no sense of consequence. The immediacy of the brutality throughout the film is stark, as Merhige, even through ambiguity, is able to stage such grotesque images so pervasively.

There's interpretation in art and then there's art that simply cannot be adequately interpreted and Begotten is the latter. I stopped trying to make sense of it all about halfway through and tried to immerse myself in the images and the surrounding events therein, which still proved difficult. If nothing else, it's an effective mood-piece insofar that the dread and disquieting wave of sadness it inspires on an unsuspecting viewer is a truly difficult thing to accomplish. Having said that, there's little to enjoy here, but with patience, you might be able to unearth something. I wouldn't necessarily recommend you try, however.

Starring: Brian Salzburg, Donna Dempsey, and Stephen Charles Barry. Directed by: E. Elias Merhige.