Variety Magazine By DENNIS HARVEY Current Reviews... Like Peter Delpeut's Dutch "Lyrical Nitrate" a decade ago, Bill Morrison's U.S. experimental feature "Decasia" finds poetry in the abstract psychedelia created by deteriorating archival film stock. Lacking any obvious thematic or emotional arc, compilation pic succeeds as a pure exercise in visual stimulus, its narcotic effect much amplified by Michael Gordon's thunderous, dissonant orchestral score. Logical destinations are fest avant-garde sidebars and cinematheque schedules. Project began as the film component to a multimedia stage extravaganza that premiered in Switzerland two years ago (for which the score, played by 55-piece Basel Sinfonietta, was commissioned). While it demands a suspension of normal narrative/human-interest expectations, "Decasia" can stand alone as a hallucinatory canvas of images -- most from the presound era, and all streaked, misted, darkened, speckled or tornado-disrupted by chemical decay. Much footage (Sufi dancers, far-flung landscapes, WW1 parachutists) has an ancient-ethnographic feel; midsection's silent slapstick and melodrama clips feel like they're from another planet. Pulsing din of Gordon's Glenn Branca-style soundtrack adds a curiously ominous dimension to parade of time-imperiled moving pictures. Biggest minus is outrageously overlong final credit scroll, which kills much good will at nearly seven slug-slow minutes. Music, Michael Gordon. Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (Frontier), Jan. 13, 2002. Running time: 70 MIN. Variety, February 4-10, 2002. Posted: Fri., Feb. 1, 2002, 3:19pm PT Back to main page