Decasia

A fierce dance of destruction. Its flame-like, roiling black-and-white inspires trembling and gratitude.

Nothing more -- and nothing less -- than a collage of decaying, decomposing nitrate film stock...The unexpected thing is that its dying, in this shower of black-and-white psychedelia, is quite beautiful.

A fantastic symphony of decay (Decay + Fantasia = Decasia), simultaneously heartbreakingly beautiful and exquisitely sad, pieced together from snippets of old films on the verge of oblivion.

The film asks us to embrace not only the death of beauty but the beauty of death.

Lacking any obvious thematic or emotional arc, compilation pic succeeds as a pure exercise in visual stimulus, its narcotic effect much amplified by Michael Gordon's thunderous, dissonant orchestral score.

I'm sure the filmmaker would disagree, but, honestly, I don't see the point. It's a visual Rorschach test and I must have failed.