Tthe whole film is illustrative of the ideas you itemise. It lays out fairly schematically the things described below. As an abstract film it's not a patch on Brakhage's Text of Light (which someone else mentioned), from which it occasionally borrows, ie in the opening shot of an abstract light pattern that recurs every now and again. It does have a (banal) narrative, if not a plot in the usual sense.
Clunky, kitsch religiosity is what I experienced and in this sense it's as close to Bill Viola as anything else,
Nicky Hamlyn.
On 13 Jul 2011, at 00:18, russell manning wrote:
> Dan. I will ramble
> Where to begin. Twelve hours after seeing the film. Facticity (the
> overwhelming immersion in the life of suburban America shrouds (conceals)
> Mr O Brien's capacity to examine his own being. Rootedness (again O Brien's
> fascination with his vegetable garden, tree planting, digging, gardening
> cultivating) Dwelling ( the role of the Obrien household as it cultivates
> character, and the haunting look it 'gives' them as they leave Waco.
> Gestell. Again Obrien becomes a pawn for industry as he resolutely tries to
> 'make it' , only to realize that it has cost him and his family.
> Then there is the nature of memory and the relationship of the camera to
> being and to time. The camera moves and sways trying to penetrate moments,
> but it is as if these moments can be phenomenologically revealed for us by
> the camera, only to be concealed again. This is Heidegger's ecstatic time, a
> temporality of layers. For me here is where the film opens into the world of
> cosmology. That being opens itself into the eternal cosmos, that which
> Dasein tries valiantly to transcend. I'm still trying to marry the dinosaur
> scenes.
> I don't know too much about Heidegger as some in this forum do, but the film
> seems to be open to such interpretation.
> Regards
> Russell
>
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