Essential Brakhage 

By Stan Brakhage

Reviewed by Kenny Brechner  

    That Stan Brakhage is an independent film maker of some fifty years standing and some 350 films, I know because I read McPherson and Company's newly released title, Essential Brakhage: Selected Wrtitings on Filmmaking.

    I had not heard of Brakhage before its publisher, Bruce McPherson, brought it to my attention. Nobody, it turned out, on my staff had heard of Brakhage, not even a college student interested in film. A search in Books in Print indicated a few titles, most of which were connected to McPherson, though a few were not. The idea suddenly struck me that Brakhage was in fact a character made up by the publisher, painstakingly brought to life. It's not true, but I'm strangely loth to give the idea up.

    Brakhage, like those who seek unicorns, white harts and stags in remote glades, is interested in the capture of elusive quarry, and his discourses center on the means thereto. As anyone who has tried to swat a rambunctious fly has discovered, one must turn one's focus away from the target, maintaining a peripheral gaze upon the winged adversary. This technique, which is equally applicable to capturing unicorns, harts, and stags, is the method Brakhage commends.

    In his writing, however, Brakhage himself plays the stag. The constant flow of ideas and images invites the reader to chase the author over an ever receding landscape of imagery and reference. There is indeed something profoundly cinematic in his demands on the reader, the speed of his passage along with his stream of dual referents to the reader and to himself, are like twin leads dangling from an escaping, taunting quarry.

    To follow is to suspend disbelief, the request of all films, and the achievement of rather less. If the reader, however stops and examines the galloping sentences, applying rather than suspending judgement, the effect is rather mixed. Many statement sound good but are questionable at least.

    Take the following statement. "The earliest cave paintings discovered demonstrate that primitive man had a greater understanding than we do that the object of fear must be objectified ...that there can be no ultimate love where there is fear."

    Well, Lovecraft argues the opposite, and really, there is a lot to be said for nameless cosmic fear, in literature anyway. Also, love has everything to do with fear. The idea that its expulsion somehow purifies love has religious rather than artistic overtones.

    On the other hand Brakhage's writing is full of well turned phrases and insights such as, "one may photograph an hour before sunrise or an hour before sunset, those marvelous taboo hours when the film labs will guarantee nothing."