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MORRISON
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Decasia,
Dir. Bill Morrison. 2002. N/R. 67mins.
By Andrew Lewis Conn
March 20–27, 2003
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.
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