Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Lucifer Rising / USA / UK / West Germany / 1981

The full film can be viewed, in three parts and with regrettable resolution, here.

Sumptuous, iconographic, and obtuse, Kenneth Anger’s last major film, the product of eleven years of traveling, filming, editing, re-editing, scoring, and re-scoring, is an astonishing summation of his cinema of ritual, magick, and fetishism. Anger’s conception of cinema as a rite — as an act to be performed by the film and by the spectator — finds perhaps its fullest expression here, with an epic, timeless, and spaceless mythos of rebirth, featuring volcanoes and pyramids, ancient Egyptian and pagan iconography, Donald Cammell and Marianne Faithful, Stonehenge and the Sphynx. The filmmaker’s forceful use of cinema to blend the animate and the inanimate, to give body and life to the inert and the symbolic, is matched only by Jodorowsky and Matthew Barney at their most extreme.

Technically, the film is also among Anger’s most accomplished, with innumerable moments of inspired cutting and a barrage of visual effects that teeter on the edge of conventional psychedelia without losing their mystery or unsettling aspects. (This is no doubt enhanced by star Bobby Beausoleil’s excellent, almost krautrock-like score, which he completed while incarcerated for his participation in the Manson murders.) Unlike others of his generation, but appropriate to the author of Hollywood Babylon, Anger was not so much interested in tearing down the conventions of narrative filmmaking as raising them to a new, metaphysical level. As a result, Anger luxuriates in lurid, symbolic color, star-closeups, and graceful tracking shots (similar to those that caressed the bodies of motorcycles in Scorpio Rising and the bodies of men in Fireworks), giving birth to his own pantheistic Hollywood as Lucifer, the God of Light, rises.

by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Internet download
17 Aug 2006 6:25 PM | Comments (8)

Comments / 8 total / Submit Comment

1. mark / 29 August 2006 / 12:05 AM

   The man certianly did not forgoe the artistry of using real back-grounds. I thought at one point Jimmy Page was working on this sound-track: Am I wrong?

2. leo / 29 August 2006 / 8:21 AM / URL

   Jimmy Page did work on a soundtrack for this film, but Anger apparently fell out with him, claiming that he took too much time. Bobby Beausoleil offered this soundtrack while doing time for his involvement in the Manson murders. And it’s quite excellent, veering from synth weirdness to hippie space rock. I’m pretty sure you can get it on CD.

3. mark / 30 August 2006 / 6:02 PM

   This would be an envieable piece for any serious Page-collector. He probably has the tapes stashed in his dungeon somewhere.

4. leo / 31 August 2006 / 8:54 AM / URL

   Actually, there’s a much more comprehensive (and hopefully, accurate) account of their brief collaboration here.

5. mark / 2 September 2006 / 6:21 PM

   that was a hell of a digest. glad I had my reading glasses. Seemed like nothing more than a dick stomp. I’d still like the tapes, I bet Chipney Jimmeny will let this go for 1.5 mill pounds

6. Mars / 10 September 2006 / 3:55 PM / URL

   Jimmy Page was fired from the film by director Kenneth Anger for basically being a lazy dolt that delivered uninspired crap after two years of “Work”. There is a “Soundtrack” record available (of dubious legitimacy) of Page’s stuff, but I wouldn’t bother. It is pure drug addict, ego-bloated crap. I’ve heard it and is sucks arse.

7. mark / 12 September 2006 / 11:40 PM

   I’ll take your word on that, Mars. I bought the vinyl of the Death Wish II sound-track when it came out and found it to be equally lacking. Thanks for the info Leo.

8. leo / 13 September 2006 / 8:26 AM / URL

   Yes, but … I for one am a big fan of drug-addict, ego-bloated crap, musical and cinematic. Beausoleil’s soundtrack, for that matter, is not exactly Mantovani, but it’s perfect for the film.