Resurrectus Est is a hand painted film which suggests, from the first, a spread of fragments of plants and flowers, individual petals and bits of twig with multiple colors, with much green ‘leafiness’. This gives way to solid yellows and browns of, or suggesting, dried grass and earth (the decay, as it were, of the above mentioned fragments); but then again, and so spaced with clear light whites as to appear airy, wind-blown, somesuch, miniscule fragments of plant life, gradually enlarging to fill-the-frame. Amidst the many floral and earthen tones, there is a particular ethereal pale, almost phosphorescent, blue which so dominates the scenes of its appearance as to cause the darker earthen yellows to lighten into a mixture with the blue that suggest abstract Easter: these tones finally take over to such an extent that the flower-fragments can no longer be seen clearly as such. The whole work turns upon the dominance of yellow-and-blue to such an extent that, by end, the film can only be seen as ‘visual music’, completely (or predominantly) ‘abstract’ and as if composed of air itself (quite distinct, say, from ‘blue sky’ ‘yellow sun’ somesuch). ...Brakhage's treatment of the birth of his daughter. Here he unleashes the full power of his technique, so apt to become abstractly unintelligible when left to his own devices, on a specific subject. The result is a picture so forthright, so full of primitive wonder and love, so far beyond civilization in its acceptance that it becomes an experience like few in the history of the movies. -- Archer Winstein, New York Post Brussels International Film Festival 1964
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