Decasia

January. 24,2002      
Rating:
7.2
Trailer Synopsis Cast

A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.

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Reviews

Chirphymium
2002/01/24

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

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Zandra
2002/01/25

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

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Kinley
2002/01/26

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

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Logan
2002/01/27

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

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bok602
2002/01/28

Having seen Lyrical Nitrate and been hypnotized by the beauty of it and of the artistry possible to be created out of found footage (even as it disintegrates), I bought DECASIA based on the reviews and in the hope that the same creative lightening would strike twice.I was much disappointed.The moments of "artistic" decay are few and far between. A previous reviewer pointed out (most poetically) the highlights of the film, but the majority of the film is endless -endless -endless clips of just poor quality footage.To make matters worse, most of the clips, which went on far too long to hold interest, were actually slowed down to make them LONGER. Case in point is the whirling dervish footage, which not only is slowed down, but also repeated several times. Then there is the procession of camels which drag across the screen in slow motion to the point that I had to fast-forward just to get past them. Neither sequence, by the way, was particularly decayed or showed any damage of note; certainly nothing to merit slowing them down to such extents.Likewise, a procession of schoolchildren through a convent garden is slowed to such an excruciating crawl that one actually misses the fact that this sequence IS damaged until you speed it up.My other complaint (and an artistic mis-step on the part of the film-maker) is the fact that black-and white film stock was used instead of color. As Lyrical Nitrate demonstrated, part of the artistic value of decayed nitrate (even if it was a "black & white" film) is the palette of color produced by the chemical reaction of the film stock.Lost are the yellows, oranges, rusts, browns and reds which might have lent some genuine visual interest to this otherwise rather bland collage.I personally would not recommend this film and would instead direct interested parties to the vastly superior Lyrical Nitrate.

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sbibb1
2002/01/29

Being an avid film restoration film, I was eagerly awaiting the chance to see this film. This film is made up of random bits of film, from various film archives around the world, which has been spliced together at random. The one connecting feature of this film is that all film used is rotting, decaying, faded, bubbling...in other words the film is decomposing. Kudos to the filmmaker for salvaging some of this film and letting the public see what can happen to film if it has not be stored or cared for properly. The footage is totally random, some nature films, newsreels, features...countries featured include the United States, Turkey, Japan, Morocco....scenes of stars like William S. Hart, Larry Semon, Mary Pickford....scenes of dignitaries arriving aboard ships from 1920s newsreels; 1950s educational films.....a really vast array.However the film can be agonizing to sit through, especially because it is in incredibly slow motion, and most of the time we get only a fleeting glimpse as to what is actually in the film frame, most of the time the entire image is distorted. I watched the movie in fast forward, and even then it was too slow. The movie has very haunting music, and this film could easily be shown in October as part of a scary movie festival.

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x-princess-beci-x
2002/01/30

I was made to watch this film in film studies this morning and i was definitely not impressed! In my course, i have watched a variety of weird, out of the ordinary, alternative, world cinema films, and have enjoyed most, but this was so off the wall, and hardly bearable to watch. The best description i can give is: the video that is watched in "The Ring". Like that, but 10 times more random, 10 times more freaky, and there's 67 minutes of it. After the video is watched in The Ring, there is a phone call saying that you will die in 7 days, and we were half expecting this to happen when we finished watching this film, and we would have welcomed it! The whole class was left feeling completely bemused and just a little insane! The music! Half the orchestra was tuned half a tone down, and the other half was tuned half a tone up! As if the film wasn't bad enough! In all, I would say that this film is a complete waste of time, unless you want to torture someone, in which case it is an extremely useful tool!

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karbenbased8786
2002/01/31

This film is a bunch of random pieces of old, deteriorating, film being played with music. Doesn't sound too interesting - and it isn't. According to the interview section on the DVD, Morrison explains that this film is some sort of symbolic expression of the decay that all life goes through. While this sounds like a nice analogy, the film doesn't really convey anything deep or philosophical. Just watching a bunch of old damaged film doesn't really end up conveying much of anything - all we get is to watch old film! The visual effect is sort of cool for about ten minutes, then its just boring. Its all black and white and just seems monotonous. Its like I get the point about decay in the first five minutes. The music in this film is excellent however, is you like abstract and dark ambiance music. In this case, the film isn't worth much but the soundtrack is great!

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