Bodysong (2003) Reviews

• the movie of a life time

  rutkins2004-01-16

  With all due respect to the person who wrote the first review saying the footage was 'second rate', I think he misses the point. The reason why a lot of the clips aren't well shot or famous is because they are shot by amateurs about amateurs - this is a film about real life, and about a common humanity. Incidentally, there are shots of astronauts and atom bombs, and also some very famous clips, such as the clip from the old film 'the kiss' and the infamous shooting of a Vietnamese man. The giving birth part of the film was for me rather painful to watch, which surprised me because, having seen Irreversible the week before, I didn't think anything could shock me. Many of the clips were funny, and others moving, but the film was flawed for a number of reasons. Primarily, I was confused by the order in which he tackled the various themes, which instead of going chronologically from birth to death exploring themes in-between, went from birth to death to rebirth, religion, marriage etc.. Also, having spent about 20mins on childhood and the teenage years, he spent no time on the elderly, unless you count the 'death' part. I also felt that the plinky-plonky music didn't really help much, particularly during the 'sex' sequence. Why is there freaky jazz music going on over the sex part? Why is sex portrayed as some strange, subversive, aggressive part of life? I'll never understand why in 'serious' films hardcore sex attracts aggressive jazz music, when if you watch a hardcore porn movie it always has soft jazz music. Although there were many parts of the film I enjoyed, it didn't have the coherence or forward thinking approach of similar films such as Koyaanisqatsi. P.S I don't know why people would walk out of a film like this - it was marked '18' in the UK, so some of the scenes were expected, and all the reviews I read for it clearly stated that it was a series of clips put to music. Besides, it's not that long.

• a must-see emotional roller-coaster

  jessewolden2004-11-02

  BODYSONG is a must-see emotional roller-coaster build up out of clips of found footage from all periods of film-making from all over the world. A cinematic experience in the true sense of the word, using images and music (a fantastic diverse film score from Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood) to speak to the audience on a gut and heart level. In a time where the individual is paramount this intelligent film dares to push you to think about what it means to be human. At first the film follows the cycle of life, starting with conception, a cascade of births, growing up, mating rituals and sex, followed by violence, destruction, old age, illness and death. Because there is no voice-over used, the images are incredibly strong. There is no way to escape the visual, you cannot box it with knowledge and therefore the less pleasant sides of humanity are straight in your face. We are all animals driven by procreation and lust for power, moving in herds and I watching this, am one of them. I think I am special, but I am not. Fortunately director Simon Pummell then shows us the redemptive side of humanity: the search for meaning. Through religion and ritual, art, dreams, beliefs and solidarity. Particularly interesting is the introduction of speech very late in the film, adding cinematic ally as a positive, the discerning factors between animal and human: voice and reason. The film ends upbeat, pulling out into space, leaving the human species on their planet, with all their smallness and bigness ticking over, generation after generation. The Bodysong website delivers finally something very few film websites do: a meaningful experience in itself and not just a promotional tool. The website has all the clips used in the film and it is on the website you can find out what, when and by whom. The choice for mostly amateur non-fiction footage makes absolute sense to me as this film speaks about real people. That the choice is also highly personal (and anyone else making this film would choose different clips) echo's and underlines the theme of the film: we are all the same, but different.

• Joy of discovery

  foxc-22006-12-08

  As I started to watch this extraordinary film, I found the 30 or 40 graphic birth sequences, a few cut with MTV precision, to be somewhat repetitive, even though the cumulative effect is one of wonder and the "That's-how-we-ALL-started" realization. As the film wandered on, photographically documenting our communal journey through life, the immense variation of sequence (locale, year, style, situation, etc.) gave it rhythm and pace. The first climax of the film is arresting, as are the rest. An interesting, if sometimes obvious, musical score of various genres, projects warmly in 5.1. The snaps of real sex are sandwiched by snips of painful and joyous reality and while the film has a humanist political bent, it is a truly amazing work of art with remarkable archival footage edited like movements of a sonata.

• Pictures at an exhibition

  paul2001sw-12006-10-18

  'Bodysong' is a most unusual film, a collection of moving images of the human body set to music. The film demonstrates all stages of life, and includes some very explicit sexual content. In a loose way, it reminded me of Richard Linklater's film 'Slacker', in that one image follows another with some linkage, but no overall narrative in the classical sense. It's very artfully done, and almost every fragment is visually striking; but for those of us who think in words, it's just a set of pictures, distinctive but slightly lacking in purpose beyond a series of things to look at. In its own way, it's very good; but not quite my thing.

• Beautiful, moving and experimental...

  mthe2003-02-16

  I saw this film at the world premiere in Rotterdam, 3 weeks ago. I didn't know what I was going to see. The only thing I knew was the music was composed by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood. According to the title I thought the film was going to be like an ode to the human body, or something... It was far from that; a better discription for this film would be: an experimental summary of all the bright and dark sides of life that every human being will encounter during his or her existence... Beautiful and moving it is. This film feels as a strong, videoclip-like story, not as an documentary. Though, the whole film consists completely of archive footage. Every piece of footage of every highlight in the history was used to accomplish a stunning effect. (The director of this film told us, before the film was started, every shot has a story and every story can be found on their interactive website.)This was all superbly guided by a score that, in my opion, sounded very fresh and modern and it harmonized wholly with the visuals as its counterpart.