Left Field Cinema

Warning: Mild Spoilers

Begotten can easily be described as "A Tale of druid human pain and suffering". It is in all breathing essence an atheism promoting film, even though it disguised itself as a rather religious film which is then disguised again as an art house slasher surrealist piece of cinema. TThe opening scene features a figure labelled as God disembowelling himself with a straight razor for what seems to be the longest opening 5 minutes in a film. What emerges from his bloody filth is a woman labelled as mother nature, who soon becomes pregnant after engaging in necrophilia with God (did i mention it was surreal?). What mother nature gives birth to is not a baby, but a full grown, rotting, nude man labelled as "The son of earth: Flesh on bone", who is then stolen by a group of shadowy primitive figures who proceed to drag him across the central setting of the film, a barren, hellish wasteland, and finally burn him to death (or at least that is what I think happens). All the while flesh on bone is convulsing like there is no tomorrow and will on occasion vomit out some solid, organic matter, which the natives accept as gifts. Luckily our hero of the story is reincarnated after being potentially burned, but this time his mum takes better care of her poor son. Oh but the fun doesn't cease there! Another group of people find them and proceed to brutally sodomise and murder mother nature and kill son of earth. No time later, another group of humans show up and take the corpses. This group of druid humans seem to be more up to date with industry and agriculture. This colourful bunch end up burying the two bodies (after they dismember them of course. Don't forget that surreal part I mentioned). Now doesn't that sound like a pleasant viewing experience? The film seems rather pointless, but yet, it isn't. It's director E. Elias Merhige's attempt to convert the thinking viewers. He makes a smart move in killing off God in the first scene of the film. After that point, it feels like there are no rules. The plane for the characters to move around on (or better yet convulse) is an anarchist based one. The film also tries to pass along the message that we are destroying the world and the director couldn't have said it more angrily, with some of the longest "murder" scenes in any movie. Showing long sequences of human evil, and removing God from the equation to punish them tries to ask a question. If there is a God, then why isn't he righting the wrong that we have done (which is getting progressively worse with no signs of stopping)?

The film is beautiful and ugly at the same exact time. The film is grainy and disgusting and for about a third of the time you can't tell what is going on, making it one of the most disorienting film experience I've ever witnessed. Why did the director want to bother us with such confusing images. He could very well be trying to test our patience as well as trying to test our faith. it's a film that requires audience patience. My advice to you is that you see it... once.

Christopher Bryant Arnett