I'm back to watching and reviewing each and every short film included on the "By Brakhage Volume Two" disc from Criterion (after a really lengthy break from it!), and I am once again faced with the challenging and beautiful works of one of my favorite artists, the great Stan Brakhage, a man whose work remains fascinating, enigmatic, and often overlong to this day. This work invited me with open arms back to the complicated world trapped within this Criterion set; a world that zig zags and flip flops around quite a bit in terms of quality and tolerability. There are points in "Duplicity III" that are awe inspiring and radically vibrant utilizing cinematic magic tricks left and right to a point of dazzling spectacle and glory, but then there are other points in which it's just flat out f*cking boring, and I am faced with the task of just dealing with it so I can get it over with. It's a film filled with slow motion, violent colors, potentially adorable footage of potentially adorable school concerts that is transformed into a mad dance of possibly (?) symbolic madness, and much, much more. It's a wild ride...and it's an occasionally really, really, REALLY boring one, so I recommend it with some mild caution. It's only twenty minutes so it doesn't have the opportunity to be THAT painful and, in the end, it's a very worthwhile and visually stunning experience that fans of Brakhage are likely to at the very least appreciate.
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