Oh, My, God! Begotten

Begotten (1991)
This movie goes to Eleven!

My brother Brian and I just watched this really, truly, wonderfully, motherfuckingly freakfucking movie called "Begotten."

O.K., so, Fuck! Mother of Hell! God, death, insanity, terror, incontinence, misery! Even my Avowed Inner Nihilist had to cringe and look away several times. It will definitely make my Top Ten list. The photography is stunning, and I can't help believing that the indescribably bizarre, horrific, and seemingly random imagery will coalesce for me into some kind of meaningful narrative with repeated viewings.

That is to say that my own impression of this thing is so unformed, I would be reluctant to comment much beyond a general "OH -- MY -- GOD!" And I don't really need to, since there's already plenty of incisive analysis by all kinds of incisive analyzers all over the web. Take this for example, from "bannoy" on imdb.com:

The movie begins with God (portrayed as a bandaged and obviously insane man) slicing open his torso with a straight razor and subsequently dying in his own filth. After his death, Mother Nature emerges from his corpse to impregnate herself with his blood and semen and gives birth to Man, represented by a maggot of a human convulsing on the earth.

The allegorical interpretation is illuminating, even though I personally would start from a different perspective: that it depicts a literal (obviously fictional) world where people behave this way; an actual insane man, (e.g.), slicing himself open, without this character having to "be" God in any allegorical sense -- this bizarre world being itself a metaphor for the horrific psychological realities of 20th-century existence. That would be my preferred approach, if in fact I lived in some bizarre, horrific, alternate reality in which I was under some obligation to do things like analyze movies. A film class, maybe. I shudder to think!

If I could scrape my brain up off the floor long enough, I could tell whether I am remembering or imagining that the film -- the film I have just spent I don't know how long glued to, and decidedly not on psychoactive drugs of any kind -- includes cryptic titles such as "God," "Mother Nature," "Man," etc., leading the viewer painlessly through an allegorical interpretation. Either way, it's as I said. Auschwitz, Nagasaki, the Cold War, Mutually Assured Destruction -- for me these symbolize the emotional tenor of the 20th century better than penicillin, the United Nations, or Al Gore. And why should that be? Why am I so inescapably drawn toward the evil and horrific? Excruciating misery over gleaming hope? Zyklon-B over Gleem With Fluoride? Movies like this over . . . just about anything else in the whole world?