Jonas Mekas Remembers the Brief Glimpses of Beauty
The year 2000 was a time of wholesale change in the relationship between technology and regular civilians. The world was acclimating to increased personal access to technology, such as the home computer, which allowed more ways to preserve data. Simultaneously, photo albums and diaries were traditional staples and often kept as mementos of their legacies. These objects were time capsules carrying the weight of all the major events and the simple day-to-day activities of people who wanted to remember and be remembered. The turn of the millennium and the increased availability allowed for more ways to keep these memories alive for future generations.
The home video had become an increasingly present medium for sharing touchstones one could return to at the press of a button. Weddings, births, and family vacations would never be without a camcorder to document the moment. Lithuanian filmmaker Jonas Mekas took this as inspiration, constructing a documentary featuring 30 years of his life, entitled As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty. Mekas collected hours of film from his past and constructed a documentary of the joyous moments of his life. Moreover, he created a voiceover for these chapters of his life to bring the perspective of a person looking at their past and recalling only the beauty. The film is a testament to the potential of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.
The film behaves in many areas in a similar manner to a music album. It has an avant-garde feel with film reels spliced in non-chronological order. Immense nostalgia and melancholy are exuded from the selection of music created by Auguste Varkalis to the sky blue filter, which is used as a marker of Meka’s past. The director cuts into these long stretches of a life well lived with flows of commentary that relate to the emotional gravitas of the moments. These include, lying in a hammock, playing cards, or having a picnic with their friends. Mekas celebrates these evenings with a reverence that can only be expressed as touching and beautiful.
The film is split into 12 chapters, each varying in length, all of which are composed of different themes and times broken up by the emotional variance and message. Chapter 3 contains a poem entitled "Keep looking for things in places where there is nothing." It is read in a monotone voice, invoking concepts of existentialism and loneliness. Its initial outlook seems very tragic; the character of a lonely space pilot describes his thoughts and care for the one he loves having been strengthened after coming to understand his own values. The director leaves us with no new outlook or innovative ideas; his answer is simple and direct. The poem ends with a call to love and a casting away of all the other distractions. Mekas brings up the question of life and its meaning consistently throughout the film. He searches for an answer through 30 years of work and is not met with anything clear or obvious.
Mekas, in one of his many commentaries throughout the film, discusses the art of filmmaking and his own relationship with it. He describes the life he'd lived as being its own form of art, greater than any narrative or film he could dream up. The director shows us that these moments of stability and sheer beauty can’t be compared to the greater goals that are set out by individuals to achieve. An older man in the twilight of his life looks back with wonder and chooses to leave his memories with only the beauty. Despite his best efforts to conclusively find a meaning behind all this footage, Mekas surmises that there is no answer but that he had seen many beautiful things along the way.