Decasia Dir. Bill Morrison. 2002. N/R. 67mins. Like Michael Snow's seminal experimental film Wavelength, writer-director-producer Bill Morrison's Decasia is very much about how you watch it: Your enjoyment will rise in direct proportion to your receptivity. Decasia dispenses with story, character and dialogue, instead inviting viewers to zone out—the better for its imagery to worm its way directly into your unconscious. How best to describe that imagery? It's black-and-white. It consists of archival "found" footage in various states of decay: A camel walks across the desert, a ship at sea is buffeted by inky-black waves, a man wearing a fez does the dance of a whirling dervish, a baby is born, a boxer punches an offscreen bag, a house burns to the ground. There are those who deride experimental movies as self-indulgent, indecipherable nonsense, but the cohesive interplay between Decasia's textures, manipulated film speeds and gurgling, churning, clamorous score—by Bang On a Can cofounder Michael Gordon—makes the experience compelling even for skeptics. In its pulsing discordance, this phantom movie has the power to lead a viewer to rethink the very nature of film. Struggling past the grain, past the nitrate deterioration, past the blobs and scratches and scrapes to claim a clear picture from the murk, we're reminded that film is simply a record of light falling on objects. Insofar as film is also a record of time passing, there is something quite haunting, even ghostly, about Decasia: If film is a record of the past, it is also, ultimately, a document of death and deterioration. Decasia ends where it began, an ouroboros that eats its own tail. This radical, experimental masterwork feels like the first film, and feels like the last film.—Andrew Lewis Conn Back to main page