Seeing Life and Death Through One's Own Eyes: My Analysis of Brakhage

As I expressed in lecture and in my previous post in response to Brakhage’s “The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes”, I originally found the film to be very inappropriate and unnecessary. I responded to the film primitively, basing my response solely on my emotions without considering any elements of the film’s production or purpose. I was actually angry at Brakhage for creating such a disturbing film. However, after analyzing the film on a critical level, through the claims of the Bart Testa article, I was able to form an appreciation for the film and I was able to form my own interpretation of the film.
Testa explains the defining elements of a documentary, as well as the elements that the viewer expects from a documentary. The main defining feature that people recognize in a documentary film is the overriding argument or explanation, that one reason for exposing the visual elements as a form of supporting evidence. We (the general public) are expecting the visual images to be used as part of a greater argument that is supported by “the use of voice-overs, printed titles, and/or ‘quasi-verbal’ montage constructions” (Testa 270). The idea of the image being used as support for a greater argument or explanation can be referred to as the act of showing. Testa explains this concept well, stating that when an image is used “to illustrate a procedure that needs to be explained, for example, or to support a moral argument, [the film] provides a ready-made position from which to comprehend what is shown” (271).
In contrast to many documentary filmmakers, Brakhage strives to take the viewer out of their comfort zone. The first hint of this is the lack of sound in many of his films, including “The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes”, which he utilizes to eliminate the context of the film's subject. Furthermore, he separates the visual elements from any sort of verbal or communicative explanation and in turn eliminates the act of showing from his films. Brakhage leaves the visual image unaided or prompted by features like voice-overs or dramatic music in order to force the viewer to see everything. Testa reminds us how easily the viewer would “slip behind verbal explanations of the pathologists’ procedures, analyses of the cause of death, or perhaps some moral argument that necessitates showing such images” (270) if we were given the option when faced with such graphic and shocking content. Brakhage forces us into the act of seeing, which the title of the film aptly alludes to. In retrospect, I can see that I fell into this act of seeing, because I couldn’t think about anything but the images that were flashing in front of me for the duration of the film. I was immersed in the act of seeing or observing these unreal, unfamiliar images on the screen.
This concept of the act of seeing is emphasized well within the Testa article, as the Brakhage film is contrasted with Peter Greenway’s “Death in the Seine”, which is a reflexive pseudo-documentary that uses actors to portray deaths from 1795 to 1801 in Paris and the resulting autopsies (271). The two films address the same topic but in completely opposite ways. “Death in the Seine” relies on the act of showing to reveal the overall message of film, which is quite obviously different from Brakhage’s work.
The decision to omit sound from the film was an issue of controversy after the film was released and was even a topic of discussion and debate within our own class. As I’ve stated, it was effective because it forced the viewer to watch and see the entire film. By seeing the film, there wasn’t an outside influence on the viewer’s interpretation of the film. We were forced to create our own voice-over or narrative in order to make our own interpretation. This then allows the viewer to search introspectively. The viewer must decide if their response to the images is appropriate or accepted, which draws in a personal and moral element to the process of watching the film.
The film is part of Brakhage’s Pittsburgh trilogy that documents three different city institutions (the police, a hospital, and a morgue) and reveals a form of “public seeing”. This is a concept that made me feel a little more comfortable with the subject of the film. The trilogy consisted of “Eyes”, “Deus Ex”, and “The Act of Seeing With One’s Eyes”. The Testa article outlines the idea of public seeing within the three movies:

“Eyes casts city police as the means we use to watch over our public lives; Dues Ex depicts the hospital as the house of the protective and curing medical gaze; and the coroner’s look, … is the last collective gaze we cast upon ourselves, our bodies in death.”

Testa reveals and extensively supports the importance of vision within this film. First off, Brakhage sees vision as a whole-body experience and the film clearly connects the concept of the body with the concept of seeing. The most evident connection between vision and the body is when Brakhage takes the viewer into the skull through the eye socket (the camera enters the skull cavity). The camera is documenting the anatomical machine of vision, and we are looking at this body part through our own vision. Brakhage is displaying the “literal confrontation between our act of seeing and the body’s means of seeing” (281). This confrontation leads to the more apparent confrontation between life and death. Many critics have suggested that it is difficult or impossible to “show death” and yet, Brakhage allows us to experience the difference between life and death through this confrontation.
The opposition of life and death, or seeing and not seeing, can be further explained through Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of differance and binary oppositions. To sum up his concepts roughly is to say that language is defined by what it is different from, not by what it is. However, the idea of binary oppositions suggests that there are similarities within such common oppositions (like man/woman, life/death) because there must be some connection between the two words or concepts. For example, “life” is connected to “death” because “death" is partially defined as something that is not "life". When this philosophy is applied to the film, the viewer is witnessing the difference and similarities of life and death.
As Brakhage takes us into the “means of seeing” in a dead body (the eye socket and skull cavity), we are able to recognize that this body is no longer able to see. This is something we are realizing as we are seeing, which separates us from this body. The viewer is able to comprehend the difference between life and death by witnessing their living abilities in comparison to the dead body’s inabilities.
After viewing the film, the most disturbing aspect for me was the dehumanizing element that Brakhage displayed. To quote my first blog entry, “I don’t want to be forced to think of a person as a dead body”, meaning that I found it difficult to observe something as sacred as a human life in such a degrading form. I felt that Brakhage had brought the human body down to its most demeaning level. I now realize that there are many more levels to this portrayal of the human body as a dead body. He uses the context of a morgue to show the power and importance of seeing. The film transforms the space from a mysterious, foreign zone into a space where the body transforms from its human form, and the film does this solely by allowing people to see this unknown space (Testa 283). Brakhage’s film is about this transformation, as it is self-contained within the morgue.
Brakhage has made several films that examine the rituals surrounding death and the body that remains after death, including “Sirius Remembered” and “The Dead”. Although they both cover very different events, there is a connection to “The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes”. Brakhage reveals the concept of death through the act of seeing within this film. By forcing the viewer to see and to interpret the film independently, it brings about some moral issues and pushes our personal limits, but the film goes past that to display the binary opposition of life and death. Like any opposition, one element can only exist in relation to the other, which in fact makes the two concepts similar. My interpretation of “The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes”, after reading the Testa article, is that Brakhage is putting the preconceived notions of life and death into question. By forcing the viewer to see the entire film and by organizing the film in a way that never allows the viewer to become desensitized, Brakhage makes the viewer acknowledge the unbreakable connection between life and death and forces us to accept this within in our lives.
Even through the name of the film, we can see the connection between life and death. When Brakhage takes the camera into the eye socket of the corpse, we are essentially seeing out of the eyes of the dead body. Consider this idea in relation to the title: "The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes". Brakhage creates a connection between our vision and the dead body's vision and uses the film's title as an ambiguous connection between the two. He very subtly hints that we are seeing out of our own eyes, which is not to say that we are this specific dead body, but that we will all be in the same position at some time. Brakhage forces the image of death into our field of vision quite obviously, but when looking on a more analytical level, we can see the binaries of life and death that he is portraying to the viewer.



http://youtube.com/watch?v=luO9uTzYi3s : Here's the link to Brakhage's film "Sirius Remembered" for anyone who didn't find "The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes" too disturbing.