Review: Decasia: The State of Decay

Decasia is uncompromising, difficult, and unbearably beautiful.

Decasia: The State of Decay
Photo: Icarus Films

Like any Stan Brakhage you may or may not have seen, New York-based filmmaker and artist Bill Morrison’s Decasia is uncompromising, difficult, and unbearably beautiful. The director’s camera travels through a cavernous film lab, revealing a faceless individual pulling a strip of celluloid from developing fluid. There are three stories here: that of the archival footage, its layer of emulsion deterioration, and their combined effect.

Decasia is a work of suggestive genius, its narrative open to interpretation. The first half might as well be the hallucination of a Middle Eastern man whose native tradition causes him to spin before a group of fellow tribesmen. The decay of the celluloid—which resembles everything from butterflies and leaves to sponges and the ridges of the human brain—becomes a stunning complement to the archival footage. The film is so hypnotically ephemeral and grandiose that its seamless linkage of sound to image suggests a spiritual presence.

The Bang on a Can score pulsates with a quasi-techno groove that heightens the gravitas of the film’s archival footage. And just as Decasia seems to wind down, it begins again: a child is pulled from the womb, a boy (possibly the newborn’s older incarnation) rides a bus, a woman (possibly his mother) burns her body fat inside a beauty salon’s sweat chamber.

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The grainy, monochromatic images of children inside convents and planes unleashing care packages conjure images of war. Like the phoenix, the planes from a carnival ride seem to originate from the flame-like celluloid decay. Then, a woman wearing a flowery kimono is knocked out—or awakened, it doesn’t matter. Per its title, Morrison’s film is very much about the state of decay, but more specifically, it’s about the birth, death, and rebirth of physicality itself.

Score: 
 Director: Bill Morrison  Distributor: Icarus Films  Running Time: 70 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2002  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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