MovieChat Forums > Begotten (1991) Discussion > I must have missed something

I must have missed something


I really didn't get it. I watch films like this, and I read the reviews and I have a sneaking suspicion that some people pretend to see a deeper meaning so they're not accused of being stupid.

I've heard different theories, such as the creation story, but I don't buy it.

Maybe I'm way off base here, please explain the deeper meaning that you got out of this film

Side note: The first scene was very interestingly shot and it did entertain me, but what followed, in my opinion, was pointless.

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I just think it looks nice.

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same
it's just so interesting looking

Sorry About My Bad English

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I know many people say this was one of the most disturbing movies they have seen and I found to be boring, dull, and pointless...and not disturbing in the least.

Deeper meaning? Perhaps.. Cool looking, sure... But there's a lot more out there which is 'disturbing'.

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ditto

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I'll try to explain what I got from the film, but this is entirely subjective and I do not claim to know the artist's intention, if there was one.

1) as i mentioned in another thread, this felt like an expression of nietzsche's idea that the ultimate source of all good and beautiful things--even life itself-- is blood and suffering. In this case depicted with mother earth and god suffering and dying (Nietzsche is actually more focused on human beings who have suffered for the sake of society's 'good' and 'beautiful', but the universal quality is not necessarily a contradiction to his thought).

2) the use of black and white and the blurryness is supposed to suggest a hidden essence of the objects being depicted. the essence is there, but not in their image. there is a similar interpretation of impressionism. I'll quote a thinker on this, because he expresses it much better than I. According to Oswald Spengler (German philosopher/historian) regarding impressionism: "The effect that is made upon us by things that receive and reflect light is made not because the things ARE there, but as though they 'in themselves' ARE NOT there. The things are not even bodies, but light-resistances in space, and their illusive density is to be unmasked by the brush-stroke. What is received and rendered is the IMPRESSION of such resistances, which are tacitly evaluated as simple functions of a transcendent extension." (from "Decline of the West").

What spengler says about impressionism I think also applies to the techniques in this film. We are given the IMPRESSION of suffering, violence, etc. because the artist believes that these things exist transcendentally or universally. We are given only part of the picture, and our mind fills in the rest of the blank. This is also a common technique of persuasion in rhetoric, where people give you part of what they're saying (Nietzsche does this all the time) and the mind fills in the rest, and therefore identifies with it more because it produced the final pieces.

I think these techniques are used to suggest or impress upon the mind that causing suffering upon others not only is a part of us internally, perhaps biologically. This again is a huge aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy. The beginning opens with a quote, "like a flame burning away darkness, life is flesh on bone convulsing above the ground." You could certainly read that quote from the perspective I am talking about.


3) All in all, I believe the movie is meant to express the repressed, violent and gruesome side of ourselves that is ignored in modern societies (especially christian ones). Not only do we ignore this side of ourselves, we often pretend they dont exist. The violence and film techniques are combined with a cosmonogy to not only remind us of this, but to suggest, as Nietzsche did, that this repressed side of ourselves is where we come from, and may even be essential to us.

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