Art has always been subjective. There are films you watch, understand immediately and move on from, then there are films that leave you staring at the screen wondering what the hell you just experienced. E. Elias Merhige’s BEGOTTEN belongs firmly in the second category.
We spent a while scratching our heads after watching this one because calling BEGOTTEN a horror film doesn’t quite seem to cover it. In the traditional sense, it isn’t really horror. In some ways, you could argue that it barely feels like a film at all, instead playing more like a disturbing graphic retelling of creation, death, and rebirth brought to life through some of the most unsettling imagery you’re likely to encounter.
Now, audiences will have another opportunity to experience Merhige’s bizarre and beautiful nightmare in a new 4K restoration, opening Oct. 2 at New York City’s IFC Center.
There will also be a special screening Today, Oct. 1 followed by a Q&A with Merhige, giving fans the opportunity to hear directly from the filmmaker behind one of the most visually singular pieces of underground cinema ever made.
BEGOTTEN doesn’t exactly hand you a traditional narrative. There are no conventional characters, dialogue or comforting explanations waiting around the corner. The film’s credited figures include God Killing Himself, Mother Earth and Son of Earth: Flesh on Bone, with the story unfolding through a series of brutal, surreal images depicting creation, destruction and transformation.
WATCH THE TRAILER FOR “BEGOTTEN” BELOW
OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: Begotten is a wordless black-and-white film in which God Killing Himself tears open his body and dies. Mother Earth rises from what remains, takes his seed into herself, and gives birth to Son of Earth — Flesh on Bone. Cast into a barren world, he is seized by the Nomads, tortured, killed, and briefly returned to life by his mother. The Nomads destroy her too, leaving mother and son to perish together. The Robed Figures gather what remains of their bodies, grind them down, and return them to the soil. The ground flowers.
Shot on 16mm and rephotographed frame by frame over four years, Begotten transforms bodies, landscape, darkness, light and grain into a physical world with its own laws. This new restoration presents the film in the complete photographic form it was always meant to possess.
The restoration was completed in 4K from the original 16mm negative and optical soundtrack, with scanning, restoration and final grading handled at Filmscan & more in Munich, Germany, under Merhige’s supervision.
That makes this new presentation particularly interesting for anyone who has only experienced BEGOTTEN through older home-video releases or less-than-ideal transfers. A film this dependent on texture, contrast and imagery deserves to be seen in the best possible presentation, especially when its entire visual identity feels like it was dragged out of some forgotten corner of a nightmare.
The new 4K restoration of BEGOTTEN opens Oct. 2 at the IFC Center in New York City, with the special Oct. 1 screening and Q&A with E. Elias Merhige.
