Brand Upon The Brain (2007) 4/10

Every now and then I like to watch bizarre cinema from around the world. The Criterion Collection is a pretty good source to check out weird stuff that has some meat to it. I figured Brand Upon The Brain, having been released by Criterion would be one such film. Nope.

Brand Upon The Brain is about a young man that is asked by his dying mother to paint her lighthouse one more time before she passes. Going back stirs up all sorts of long forgotten memories for the man and unlocks some mysteries from his past.

The film is shot in black and white and put together like a silent film from the turn of the last century. Beautifully rich textured visuals abound the film as well as a Terry Giliam-esque future punk aesthetic. The film is narrated by Isabella Rossolini and uses text slides as well. The problem isn't with any of these things, although the narration did get on my nerves after a while. The problem here is the editing. Every second, or less the frame changes. The shots are all shaky, lit strangely, out of focus, or any other number of "arty" touches that only make the film lack clarity. The fast paced editing was too much for me to take. Every time I saw something visually appealing, it was gone before I could let it soak in. There are some really strong visuals here but we're never given the chance to really see them. They're gone before we can blink, replaced by another strong image, and so on. In fact, since most of the images are stunning and powerful, they all lose power. Too much of a good thing and it becomes accepted and expected rather then appreciated. Its almost as if the director tried to cram in as much visual stimuli as possible, rather then let his compositions breathe. Because of this the film was impossible for me to watch. Its a damn shame too, theres some real talent behind the lens.

Brand Upon The Brain is a silent film with a hyper mediated and self aware editing style that doesn't mesh well. The editing is much too fast to enjoy anything thats going on onscreen and because of that the film wasn't enjoyable.

Overall -4/10