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Decasia

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 6 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 2 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Bill Morrison
Directed by: Bill Morrison
Release Date:
Theatrical: March 19, 2003
Running Time: 70 minutes, B / W
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
This experimental film depicts man's struggle to transcend his own mortality.
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Village Voice J. Hoberman
A fierce dance of destruction. Its flame-like, roiling black-and-white inspires trembling and gratitude.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
A fantastic symphony of decay (Decay + Fantasia = Decasia), simultaneously heartbreakingly beautiful and exquisitely sad, pieced together from snippets of old films on the verge of oblivion.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Anita Gates
Nothing more -- and nothing less -- than a collage of decaying, decomposing nitrate film stock...The unexpected thing is that its dying, in this shower of black-and-white psychedelia, is quite beautiful.
Read Full Review >Variety Dennis Harvey
Lacking any obvious thematic or emotional arc, compilation pic succeeds as a pure exercise in visual stimulus, its narcotic effect much amplified by Michael Gordon's thunderous, dissonant orchestral score.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
The film asks us to embrace not only the death of beauty but the beauty of death.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Chris Gore
I'm sure the filmmaker would disagree, but, honestly, I don't see the point. It's a visual Rorschach test and I must have failed.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.5 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Lucio F. gave it a2:
An interesting exercise that certainly has its moments of haunting beauty: unfortunately those moments are rare and of no great intensity. At 30', the collage would have been memorable. At 70', it's just boring and pretentious. 2/10
RJ Beeswax gave it a 9:
There is a disquieting and ominous force that often reveals itself in the damaged abstractions and specific scenes in the decomposed footage of Brian Morrisons film, Decasia: The State of Decay. This force is the lawfulness of time and nature and it is often presented ambiguously through contrast and connotation. This force can also be seen as the inevitability of death and decay, and it is made real when contrasted with the specifics of lives and times, people and places, long since forgotten. All our memories, once real-life moments, are temporary and its a heavy concept to grasp (for me anyway), perhaps the concept(s) of death/decay/transitoriness is too inscrutable to fully recognize or acknowledge in any thorough or systematic way. This concept of mortality is inherently enigmatic and because of the unfathomable quality of the concept, film-maker Brian Morrison decided to artfully imply it by showing memories and moments within/upon, time-ravaged, stock footage, as a metaphor for existence. All things must meet an end And Decasia: The State of Decay, deals with this inevitability in an abstract way that is both haunting and sensual.
