Begotten

United States

1990

78 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

English, None

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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CAST Brian Salzberg, Donna Dempsey, Stephen Charles Barry, James Gandia, Daniel Harkins

God disembowels himself with a straight razor. The spirit-like Mother Earth emerges, venturing into a bleak, barren landscape. Twitching and cowering, the Son Of Earth is set upon by faceless cannibals. —Marty Cassady

Director

E. Elias Merhige

Edmund Elias Merhige, known as E. Elias Merhige, (born June 14th, 1964) is an American film director born in Brooklyn.

Merhige is best known to mainstream audiences for the 2000 film Shadow of the Vampire, and to underground audiences for the cult-classic 1991 film Begotten.

As he says in his audio commentary to the Shadow of the Vampire DVD, Merhige views cinema as the only meaningful art form of the present era. He regards literature and drama as once-needed forms which are past their time and which have been superseded by film. He is also very interested in the occult and the paranormal, and images and themes derived from these traditions suffuse his films.

Merhige currently lives in Los Angeles, California. —Wikipedia

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VENIMOS LOS JODIMOS Y NOS FUIMOS

24Mar12

Un extraordinario debut del director E. Elias Merhige. (Posteriormente reconocido en circuitos más amplios gracias a su segundo largometraje La Sombra del Vampiro (2000)) A medio camino entre los mundos oníricos del cine de Maya Deren y la truculencia splatter de The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, el film nos muestra una extraña anécdota en la que abundan los simbolismos y las referencias diversas sobre mitos paganos y cristianos, para lo cual, Merhige echa mano de recursos narrativos poco convencionales (total ausencia de diálogos y de una banda sonora, así como un diseño visual con una fotografía en blanco y negro altamente contrastante). Con todo y sus virtudes, esta cinta es sin lugar a dudas una experiencia desconcertante y no apta para todos los gustos, debido a la continua sucesión de escenas de alto contenido gore/sexual, y por su marcada tendencia a la escatología más extrema, algo que puede resultar demasiado bizarro (o francamente repugnante) para algunos espectadores.

Juliet Benson

24Jan12

Who needs shrooms when you have 'Begotten'? This scared me shitless, and continues to do so if I so much as think of it....But that is why I love it so. Part of why it is so affecting is that you can tell it came from a pretty drastic near-death experience on the director's part. It is an unnervingly lucid deconstruction of consciousness, choice, and individuality which far exceeds its spurious "weirdo" labels.