Childhood

I found Stan Brakhage's "Anticipation of the Night" to be the most interesting of the films we watched last week. The film brings a sense of natural beauty and familiarity, something I haven’t felt from any of the films we have viewed before. The scenes of the landscapes reminded me of numerous long car rides where I watched the beautiful colors of the sunset fade into the shadows. This feeling of nostalgia was also furthered through the use of the handheld camera to film the scenes of the child crawling and sleeping; something you would see in home movies. I also loved the night scenes of the fair rides which, like O’Pray mentions, are reminiscent of Man Ray’s “Return to Reason.”

I do think that the film succeeds in Brakhage’s goal of portraying pure vision- vision unaffected by what we know in the world around us. It is interesting to think about at what age children lose this innocence. I have to say that I somehow missed that this film ends with a man’s suicide, but I can see how the film is trying to portray the innocence of childhood; an innocence that is no longer a part of adulthood.