As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty - Notes

As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000)

As I was Moving Ahead... is a mammoth of a film. A massive jumble of home movies and clips, all broke up into chapters and yet without any chronology - their free-flowing movement and pastiche form lead to one of the closest representations of memory in cinema.

As the title suggests, Mekas shows us the fleeting glimpses of beauty amongst the forgettable details, scenes and events of life. This excessive, unrestrained and maximalist approach could be deemed a negative aspect - which is reasonable - just don't mistake it as unintentional. Mekas gives us the closest depiction of a life lived as there can be, and he does this successfully by depicting life equally in its transcendent moments, and its uninspiring mundanities - often the existence of the latter leads to a greater appreciation of the former.

The erratic editing as it shifts and flashes through clips is gorgeous. The film is at it's strongest when Mekas begins to overlap his clips, creating a sort of projected montage of layers with varying transparency - completely transcending the original clips and their context, and thus creating a completely new image with a blank slate ready to create new associations and interpretations. The overlapping clips are hypnotic and some of the most beautiful imagery I've ever seen in cinema.

In a similar way to how Duchamp made us question what art could be through his readymades, Mekas makes us question what cinema can be through his ultra-personal home movie clips that even he himself describes as "being about nothing". Mekas doesn't just stop there though - he also makes us question what makes a moment in our lives transcendental, how can we differentiate them from the fleeting feelings that may seem unimportant - how can we recognise the moment we are in. The one answer he does give is that often only through retrospection can we truly realise those moments.

There is a handful of weaknesses that does, unfortunately, make this a very slight disappointment. A large majority of the music often feels like filler for sound - sometimes jarring, but mostly just distracting and unneeded. More minimalistic music would have fit better, or even just silence - that would have given greater emphasis on the image. The title cards generally felt unnecessary as they inconsistently attempted to enforce an unwelcome chronology and sense of context into this whirlwind of memories. And finally, Mekas' voiceover - it jumped between profound thoughts and passages and then dawdling babble that had no end or meaning in sight. Unlike the footage, I do believe it wouldn't be detrimental for the narration to have more restraint.

All that aside, Mekas' warmth and love of life shine through. Mekas occasionally gives the impression of an almost outsider artist, someone that Dubuffet would label as "Art Brut" - I say this because he seems to have little interest of work that had existed before him or after him, and little interest of accommodating to an audience. There's a raw quality about his work, with the narration ignored, it feels much closer to a father reminiscing his life and family - a film that wasn't intended for anyone else but himself - rather than a film made for a theatre and audience.