I, like most self-respecting males, would do just about anything on a dare. I'm not ashamed to say I've built a decent cinematographic horror culture by watching whatever was deemed too fucked up for me to process, and using these movies as a benchmark for what I should watch next. So imagine my dismay when I found out I've only watched two movies of this deemed-too-disturbing list, namely the moronic HUMAN CENTIPEDE and the willing and able-bodied A SERBIAN FILM. So how does a champ reacts to such a challenge from the internets? By tackling the most disturbing movie of all-time, according to that same list: BEGOTTEN, an experimental horror movie from cult director E. Elias Merhige. Turns out that film is not the only object of experiment in this movie, it also does innovative things to the viewer's mind.
BEGOTTEN is a grainy, black and white movie with no dialogue. The image quality is maybe equivalent to movies shot in the 1920s, such as F.W Murnau's infamous NOSFERATU. The only difference is that the soundtrack is cleaner and more deliberate, with sounds like crickets buzzing, birds chirping, flies and an obsessing horn-like instrument being played throughout every scene. I based myself off the Wikipedia plot description in order to help me understand my viewing because it's not evident from the film alone: In the opening scene, a nameless God (Brian Salzberg), is disembowling himself with a straight razor. His death seemingly gives birth to Mother Nature (Donna Dempsey), impregnagtes herself from his corpse (yes, she does!) and gives birth to a son (Stephen Charles Barry). From that point, the movie kind of falls off a cliff, or maybe it just got too abstract for my poor mind.
So, the image quality of BEGOTTEN is deliberately bad, but it's not a decision based on a realism concern. It's not meant to be perceived as found footage of anything of the sort. It feels more like an urban legend. There are movies about movies like this, where people leave private viewing haunted and longing for the truth about the film's origins. The odd presentation isn't just an artsy/mysterious excuse to justify splatter and traumatizing images, though. BEGOTTEN has a philosophy, a bleak logic by which it operates: life was created from the death of a God, so every death creates a different form of life. If you look at the world from an unselfish enough point of view, there is comfort to be found in that idea, because it would be a reason why human beings are so hell-bent on destroying one another.
Plenty of scenes, when taken out of context, will undermine the quality of your sleep.
BEGOTTEN is philosophically ambitious, but lacks the overall execution in order to live up to its aspirations. The high contrast black and white gives the movie a unique identity, but I thought it was the equivalent of watching the movie with a hand on your face as it filters and evens out the most gruesome details. What bugged me the most is that BEGOTTEN seems to run out of steam after twenty minutes or so, though. There are only three characters named in the movie, and once they've all been introduced, BEGOTTEN turns into a series of senseless beatings a band of nomadic people give to Mother Nature and her son. They beat the shit out of them, drag them somewhere else, beat the shit out of then again. It's punctuated by a graphic rape scene (trigger warning and everything), which is not the slickest surprise, but it's somewhat aligned with the overall tone of the movie.
What to think of BEGOTTEN?
It definitely is a movie that attempts to say something. It's extreme, bleak and borderline nihilistic, but it's not an excuse to shoot shocking scenes and claim it is art. It actually is art, no matter if you like that conclusion of not. The problem with BEGOTTEN is that it hides under its elaborate and original presentation. It's a fairly short movie (72 minutes), but it should've been way shorter. Maybe half of that, really. It's going to do the trick and stay with you for a couple hours, but it's also going to test your patience and your cognitive abilities to put cryptic scenes together and form meaning. BEGOTTEN didn't steal its cult status. There is nothing quite like it out there, but the expectations in creates are overbearing. It's a disturbing movie, but it definitely isn't the most disturbing movie of all-time. Take that, patronizing internet list!
It definitely is a movie that attempts to say something. It's extreme, bleak and borderline nihilistic, but it's not an excuse to shoot shocking scenes and claim it is art. It actually is art, no matter if you like that conclusion of not. The problem with BEGOTTEN is that it hides under its elaborate and original presentation. It's a fairly short movie (72 minutes), but it should've been way shorter. Maybe half of that, really. It's going to do the trick and stay with you for a couple hours, but it's also going to test your patience and your cognitive abilities to put cryptic scenes together and form meaning. BEGOTTEN didn't steal its cult status. There is nothing quite like it out there, but the expectations in creates are overbearing. It's a disturbing movie, but it definitely isn't the most disturbing movie of all-time. Take that, patronizing internet list!