Eye Myth

'Eye Myth (1967),' with an epic running time of nine seconds, took less time to watch than it did to write this sentence. Still, it is a worthy Brakhage effort. I really enjoyed 'The Dante Quartet (1987)' because it revealed the fallacy of human vision; that is, what we see is not necessarily what we get. Inside the frenzied flicker of colours and scratches, a viewer might discern objects and faces that never existed, such is the imaginative, and often self-deluding, power of the human senses. 'Eye Myth' works on a similar visceral sort of level. Watching the film through at normal speed, the eye and the mind catches a surprising amount, the split-second emergence of recognisably human faces and forms. However, watching 'Eye Myth' frame-by-frame opens up a whole new film, revealing details that previously had been obscured from us by the passing of time. In my review of 'Commingled Containers (1997),' I wrote that Brakhage captures and focuses on "brief, fleeting moments… shows us something that's before our own eyes, but that we've never seen before." Slowing down 'Eye Myth' for a second viewing shows us something that we've seen before.