For connoisseurs of extremity, a film like Begotten (1989) is old hat. Since the mid-’90s, New York filmmaker E. Elias Merhige’s black-and-white horror spectacle has circulated in both official and bootleg VHS as a kind of banner film for experimental, gore, and noise enthusiasts alike. It is a violent, explicit, and fundamentally challenging work of both physical exertion and psychological endurance, often as much for its audience as its cast. It’s also, as its proponents will argue, a work of affecting beauty and profound spiritual significance.
The problem with Begotten is that, for all of its acclaim, which even includes Susan Sontag labeling it “One of the most important films of modern times,” few have ever really seen it. That’s not to say that the film hasn’t been available, as it’s been on YouTube, The Internet Archive, and effedupmovies.com for years now, but that it hasn't been accessible in a legible sense. Even people like myself, who have watched Begotten multiple times across multiple formats at this point, haven’t ever seen anything better than a low-quality rip. For a film this abstract, both in form and in content, it’s been impossible to ever really know what you were looking at.
Now a new 4K restoration, rephotographed frame-by-frame from the original 16mm negative—a process that took four years—makes visible the infinitudes contained within the film. The story, which is more of a loosely interpreted cosmogony wherein “God Kills Himself” (as explained in the credits), “Mother Earth” emerges from his loins, “Son of Earth—Flesh on Bone” is born, and then hooded Nomads proceed to torture and destroy Mother and Son alike, becomes visually clear, while the film’s multiple meanings remain up to interpretation. One can now distinguish between bodily fluids like blood and semen, can decipher weapons and the damage they inflict, can differentiate between texture and movement. The question, formerly “What am I looking at?” now becomes, “Does knowing make it easier or harder to consume?”
While previous versions of Begotten carried with them the aura of abstraction, this new restoration makes it painfully clear that Merhige and company had a story to tell that involved death and rebirth, as well as pains and passions worthy of Testaments Old, New, and maybe even Newer. At the same time, occasional flashes of newly achieved clarity do remind the viewer that they’re looking at a bunch of art students pantomiming something like the origin of the universe. Yet the true power of Begotten resides in the fact that, even when you know what you’re looking at, it still lulls you back into the feeling that you might very well be witnessing the origin of the universe.
Begotten runs October 1–8 at IFC Center. Director E. Elias Merhige will be in attendance for a Q&A this evening.
