Begotten

Plot synopsis:
The story opens with a robed, profusely bleeding "God" disemboweling itself, with the act ultimately ending in its death. A woman, Mother Earth, emerges from its remains, brings the dead body to arousal, and inseminates herself with its semen. Becoming pregnant, she wanders off into a vast and barren landscape. The pregnancy manifests in a fully grown convulsing man whom she leaves to his own devices.
The "Son of Earth" meets a group of faceless nomads who seize him with what is either a very long umbilical cord or a rope. The Son of Earth vomits organic pieces, and the nomads excitedly accept these as gifts. The nomads finally bring the man to a fire and burn him. "Mother Earth" encounters the resurrected man and comforts him. She seizes the man with a similar umbilical cord. The nomads appear and proceed to rape her. Son of Earth is left to mourn over the lifeless body.
A group of characters appear and carry Mother Earth to another place, where they dismember her, later returning for Son of Earth. After he, too, is dismembered, the group buries the remains, planting the parts into the crust of the earth. The burial site becomes lush with flowers. Grainy photographs of God Killing Himself are shown. In a final scene, "Mother Earth" and "Son of Earth" are seen again in a flashback, this time wandering through a forest.

Tags: avant garde, psychedelic, cult, cruelty, violence

Review:
It's a movie that most people don't understand, and if you read through these comments you'll find a lot of people whose lack of ability to figure this film out results in them shrieking about 'pretentiousness' with the fervor of a gibbon rattling the bars of its cage at feeding time.
Don't watch this film while, or soon after, eating.Having said that, Begotten will stick with you for the rest of your life, like it or not.
Based on the nihilistic philosophy that life is nothing more than man spasming above ground (to paraphrase the title sequence/introduction), this will more than likely contain the most intense and grisly imagery you'll ever see in a film.There is no dialogue, only image after image describing the cycle of life.
After a slew of violent scenes depicting the rape of Nature and destruction of Man, these humanoids proceed to pound the remains of the corpses back into the ground, and the cycle of life begins anew.I actually rented this from Blockbuster one night, based on the cover art and hype content, but this is definitely not a Blockbuster-type film.
This is intense imagery based on a dark subject.I give this movie some high marks for the filmwork and audio, but I don't think I'll be watching it too often, if again.
When you make a film like Begotten you know it will divide people - one man's trash is another man's art.
I don't think Begotten is trash and I'm not sure if it's art but I do know that it haunted me long after I saw it.This is completely unlike any film you'll ever see.
It's like watching a vague memory or a disjointed nightmare play out on film.On the downside, at only 68 minutes, it's still way too long.
I still don't know, it's more like opening up a window onto a world that exists elsewhere and just watching things happen.
The first 3 or 4 minutes of Begotten were very promising; the graininess of the film, the obscurity of the scene in front of me, the silence, all made me feel like I was peering in on something forbidden, mysterious.
Half the time I was watching something purely abstract and non-representational, and the other half, what felt like old stock footage that someone had pieced together because they thought it looked neat, even though they had no context for what it was being shown.
Mercifully, the film did eventually end, with what felt like it was supposed to be a "see, there's the point of all this" series of images, but in order to reveal the point, there needs to be a question posed in the first place, and that wasn't there.
You can tell that everyone involved in the making of this movie truly love the art of what they do and understand what can be captured in cinema form.If you're looking to be "entertained" then the movie isn't for you.
Either way, it's been truly disturbing.The main question is why are such movies/installations treated like art.
"Shadow of the Vampire" wasn't great by any means - and vastly overrated, but "Begotten" makes that film look like a piece of classic cinema.
Begotten features grainy black and white on what seems to be a square format with minimal noise and art film style features.
I have watched many many movies, films and shows throughout my years and I have to say that this garbage was absolutely the worse project ever witnessed.
When the movie ended, my reaction was not of horror, or repulsion, or awe, but of amazement, as I wondered "THAT was IT?".The reason why people think that this crap being passed great art is the work of a genius is the presentation of the credits.
and i challenge anyone to be bold enough to say that this movie would be rated anything above a 1 by the majority of the people who watch and love film, mind you, i am not praising Honey I have shrunk the Kids or Brain Dead like movies, but to call this a masterpiece just because we love thinking ¨wow, i sound like a proper critic who likes Cinema d'Essai...¨is just plain wrong.
one of the comments says ¨you probably have to read the synopsis to understand......¨ and i think this sums it up, its painful to watch (actually painful as your eyes will start to ache within 5 minutes of trying to make out the picture), its trying to portray some sort of myth (which looks more like the director had a bad trip on LSD and recorded it), the sound....
I, like many moviegoers, am a voyeur to the darkside of the universe, and I wish more quality, vivid films of despair were made, but this "Begotten" is a piece of fecal matter produced by my worst enemy here in Hades.
As I am a hardcore Eraserhead fan, the "what, you can't watch a wierd black and white movie with little-to-no dialogue?" defense does not apply.
I simply can't watch TERRIBLE weird black and white movies with little-to-no dialogue.This movie is what happens when you give an angsty goth-child with no talent and nothing to say a camera and budget, and let him/her put as much meaninglessly offensive imagery on screen as possible.
This did not deserve the 20 minutes I gave it.If you're an Eraserhead fan, do NOT let simple-minded comparisons to said film con you into renting this piece of amateur trash.
It begins with God killing himself through disembowelment, which somehow causes Mother Earth to be born, and then a few minutes later she gives birth to a fully formed Son of God, who's really nothing more than a shaking skeleton with some skin on him, and then they're beset by faceless cannibals, and then things get weird.If you do watch Begotten, be sure to cleanse yourself with some wholesome Yo Gabba Gabba afterward..
I went to film school and I am still so sick and tired of every pretentious student who fancies him or herself an "artiste" with something "important to say to the world" shooting a bunch of awful, grainy, gritty, black and white footage that's disjointed and poorly spliced together, apparently on a super-8mm camera, and pretentiously declaring it to be an experimental masterpiece.
This film is one of the most boring and infuriatingly self-important pieces of crap I have ever seen -- and again I went to film school!Maybe this could have been a decent 4 or 5 minute Nine Inch Nails Video, but for what seems like two hours it's just awful.
'Begotten' frequently gets compared to 'Eraserhead' and 'Tetsuo', two movies I have a lot of time for.
I cannot think of another film in recent years which has disturbed me as much as Begotten, especially since I am unsure if what I was disturbed by was actually what was portrayed on screen.
I know that some cinema fanatics are into them, but even so, Begotten is boring as hell.The plot doesn't make much sense, and had I not read a description online, I would've had no idea what this film is about.
The story supposedly goes like this: God commits suicide by disemboweling himself, "Mother Earth" manages to impregnate herself using his corpse, and she gives birth to a son who ends up getting attacked (and maybe killed) by a tribe of cannibals.There's no dialogue at all and cinematography over the course of the film ranges from semi-decent to to unwatchable.
In some scenes I couldn't even figure out what I was being shown.Lastly, the reason I watched this film in the first place was that I suspected it would be disturbing.
I must admit, I enjoyed moments of this film, but all in all I must say, this is a pretentious work that gives art cinema a bad name.
I was told by a friend that the movie 'Begotten' was one of the best inspirational and shocking films that she had ever seen.
So she explained a few details about the movie and I set up a special night for viewing the film.The only thing I knew about the movie is that is was silent, filmed in black and white and had three main characters- with that information I started the movie that my friend called a 'cult classic'.Over an hour later the movie was over and I have no idea what the heck I watched.
It was one of those movies you keep watching hoping you will find out what is going on later in the film.
That was not the case in this 'so-called' film.Most of the time I could not tell what in the world was going on in a scene.
I wanted a surreal movie that had a bit of a horror edge.As a fan of all things weird, I wanted to watch this immediately.
It doesn't help that the grainy quality limits what you can see on the screen, but that's part of the maker's image.If you want a surreal black and white nightmare movie like Eraserhead, this is not too similar.
The film is a 76 minute ultra slow, questionably effective, irritating experience that tries to present an intriguing philosophy about the creation of the Earth and human nature.It opens with god presented as a chair-bound psychopathic man who tears open his stomach using a knife.
I'd like to think that I have a very open mind and that I can enjoy original art on many levels.The opening scene, while a tad gruesome, boded well for the rest of the film.
I was looking forward to seeing it, with dark, grainy images, an intellectual plot and being amateur/independent, but Begotten has pretentious art student film written all over it.Yeah, its grainy and dark, but it seems this effect is more an excuse to not worry about the realism than for anything eerie.
Poking a razor with chocolate sauce on it into a pillow placed on your stomach, or badly overacting and dancing around in cheap costumes is not any more profound when the shot is grainy and dark.I liked the slow pace of the opening scene until I realized that is wasn't going to pick up.
I watched this film under the guise of being told that I would "absolutely love it!" WRONG.I somehow managed to struggle to remain interested through what turned out to be the longest 78 minutes of my entire life.
I saw the film nearly a year ago,but I hardly remember how I came across that pretentious experimental work.I had seen some scenes from the film,but couldn't find the guts to watch the whole of it.Unless I got stoned one day...
Probably everyone heard from a stoner that "you look at things from different perspectives when you are high." Well,the decision was made and I watched the entire film.Do I regret?
I do like experimenting,but I also prefer that if it doesn't work, it should be abandoned.Not to be demonstrated as an"art-house" cinema.The guys experimented with distorted,black and white images with scary background noises.Putting aside the philosophical storyline (by the way,it is also pretentious), the cinematography simply doesn't serve any purpose.Do not waste your time!.
Begotten is filmed in stark black and white, with such a high contrast that you often cannot tell exactly what's going on.
Good God, what is humanity coming to when we start making movies like this one?Bearing a strong resemblance to German holocaust footage, this extremely violent and psychologically disturbing silent film is without a doubt the most evil thing ever to be released on video.
I don't want to say a whole lot more about it, just that I saw it almost a month ago and I still haven't fully recovered...I don't think I'm ever going to forget the scene at the beginning where the God cuts himself open with a razor and then starts pulling himself apart with his hands.
Obviously this doesn't make any sense at all, and that's exactly what Begotten is.Don't get me wrong the concept of this film sounds great, God killing himself; mother earth-giving birth to the land, Son of Earth being tortured and whatever.
I appreciate films that make the audience think, but quite honestly if it wasn't for the closing credits saying God Killing Himself played by some guy, Mother Earthy played by some girl I met on the street, Son of Earth played by my friend Bob, I can assure you I might have thought this film was a complete waste of time and pointless.
If intellectualism was the director's intent, then I'm sorry because there is no point to this silly story.If anything this is like a stylish black and white mess of a violent soft-core porn film.
Great way of conserving energy!I admire first time filmmakers for trying to make films in black and white, well its actually grayscale but Begotten is literally black and white.
I'm not one to call a film pretentious, but "Begotten" seems to have little meaning.
At the end of the film a cast of 'characters' informs us that those at the beginning were God killing Himself, Mother Earth, and Son Of Earth - Flesh On Boneif that helps.In addition to this challenging content, another point of contention is the grainy, 'Erasrerhead'-esque black-and-white cinematography which makes the images at times so distorted that it's difficult to discern any clear outlines, which can be frustrating when you're trying to not miss anything in an attempt to fathom the impenetrable narrative!
The movie is like burroughs naked lunch,each time you read it its a different story.
I would like everyone to see this movie(most of them i know how started watching it went out of the cinema after 10 minutes) Its a important movie,its about you and me and our history..
Just watching the first scenes i said: "what...?" it's like being in a weird crazy nightmare, but if you look deep inside all the movie you will discover the meaning of all (of course you need your neurons at the top of it's power).
I will watch Begotten the next week with my friends, I hope they won't die because for normal people it's so hard to understand the meanings of this movie, some scenes could be dangerous for their minds, so dangerous that they could kill themselves or be mad for the rest of their lives..
....for Merhige having made Suspect Zero, I would say that this guy should be put in a room, a very soft one, not within sniffing distance of a camera.However, Suspect Zero is an all-time favorite of mine, in spite of its apparent commercial failure.As per some other reviewer, were it not for the final credits, and of course having done some homework on it, I would've had no way of knowing who the two initial characters were.Although, and it could've been my eyes playing tricks, but "God" look liked here was wearing a garment (T-shirt) of the Turin Shroud???
Going into BEGOTTEN, you have to open your mind and imagination and experience this film.
if your disgusted, horrified or even bored then at least your reacting, and i think that your reacting to life and the idea of life created.begotten is not pretentious, but it is a film that requires you to bring no assumptions and expectations to its viewing.
I may sound like I'm picking on this film quite a bit, so I'll lay out some of the reasons I gave this oddity such a high rating: -the visuals are pretty damn beautiful despite their gritty feel, and whenever they aren't beautiful it's due to some of the film's intentionally disturbing imagery -in terms of a horror film, "Begotten" may be unusual but it's still extremely effective, filled with the creepiest visuals imaginable and an atmosphere so dark and strange that it almost flawlessly replicates the weirdest of my nightmares.
-it's a successfully otherworldly experience, and that's one of the best and most important things I think that film can do -the scenes that are intriguing are almost endlessly watchable and have gained an impressively iconic status among horror fans in the modern day.Thanks to these several key qualities I can enthusiastically recommend "Begotten" to bug fans of artistic, surreal, scary, and disturbing cinema.
In a lot of reviews you will likely hear people say this film peaked in the first ten minutes or so.
Begotten was filmed in very grainy/ blurry way that for the majority of its length it is very hard to tell what you are looking at exactly.
Some are going to think it's a masterpiece of visuals and give you ten paragraphs of what the film is trying to "say." Others will be puking their guts out within the first few minutes and won't be able to give you a decent idea of what was to follow.
At the end of the movie I was left confused , asking myself whether it was an visually abstract original , unique film or a piece of art overdrawn with one or two moments of shock value repeated over and over.
The crickets where annoying too, I hate crickets...Yall need to check some Japanese horror/gore films (start with TAAKASHI MIKE) out, they are equally visually disturbing but actually are color and have a plot you can understand and isn't all mother earth religious bull.I think this black and white movie would've been a lot more watchable if they did what they did WAYYY back, and put words on a black screen in the middle of the scenes portraying what they where doing.
So I really laughed when I watched this pretentious movie and especially when I read the titles in the end of film: "God Killing Himself", "Mother Earth" and so on.
more like the kind of movie that you can't stop watching because of the horrifically fascinating things happening on screen.
`Begotten' makes `Eraserhead' look like a Disney flick..