...and he does so only as THE great Stan Brakhage could. In a flashy, vibrant style, "The Domain of the Moments" shows a cast of varying species at their cutest as well as their cruelest. At this point in his career, Brakhage had already mastered many of the revolutionary filmmaking techniques he is now most known for, but that does not mean that there still wasn't some room left for experimentation. Brakhage plays around with the idea of superimposing frames atop one another, and he also edits his signature "painting-directly- on-film" type imagery in between the actual footage.
The ending of the film is rather shocking, particularly if you find mice to be "cute" or "charming" in some way (personally, animals eating other animals doesn't bother me all too much, it's just a simple fact of life in the animal kingdom, although it is quite barbaric when you needlessly think about it for an extensive period of time). It shows a mouse being consumed by a classically predatory snake. Brakhage's editing is hectic throughout the film, but in these final moments of pain this style is much more noticeable, especially when Brakhage finally let's the footage relax and calms the editing down, putting strong emphasis on the final, haunting visuals of pain. It is an arguably exploitive sequence; one that provides Brakhage's mythic beauty and unflinching, explicit cruelty perfectly.
The ending of the film is rather shocking, particularly if you find mice to be "cute" or "charming" in some way (personally, animals eating other animals doesn't bother me all too much, it's just a simple fact of life in the animal kingdom, although it is quite barbaric when you needlessly think about it for an extensive period of time). It shows a mouse being consumed by a classically predatory snake. Brakhage's editing is hectic throughout the film, but in these final moments of pain this style is much more noticeable, especially when Brakhage finally let's the footage relax and calms the editing down, putting strong emphasis on the final, haunting visuals of pain. It is an arguably exploitive sequence; one that provides Brakhage's mythic beauty and unflinching, explicit cruelty perfectly.
