Not unlike an acid trip, I don't think this film is meant to be clearly "understood" in its entirety. You have to pay attention and give it some thought, like modern symphonic music or abstract painting, but doing so might just reward you with a strong appreciation. It is (a bit dated) psychedelic eye candy and food for thought. It can be rather depressing, or if taken lightly, can be quite comical. I found myself dumbfounded, asking the screen "WHAT?!" several times, but it was a good kind of "what?" because it's so off the wall. If you discount anything mind-bending or mentally challenging as boring or stupid, if your idea of great film-making is "Signs" or "True Lies," don't bother with "Wax."
15 Reviews
A Challenging and Unique Experience With Some Flaws
max4movie5 April 2020
Full review on my blog max4movies: Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees can probably best be described as a philosophic journey through the paranoid consciousness of the narrator, which is presented in the form of a science fiction pseudo-documentary. Much like documentaries on conspiracy theories, the movie is cluttered with seemingly random information about beehives, ghosts, and weapon's testing - just to name a few central themes. These concepts are mostly interconnected but overall the narrative still lacks structure and coherence. The visual presentation is perplexing with distorted images and heavy use of computer-generated effects, but the abstract shapes and intercut shots of bees match the dreamlike and hypnotic atmosphere of the movie. Overall, the movie presents some great ideas (e.g., criticism of intelligent weapons), and the presentation is, although being a low-budget production, unique and fascinating to watch - even though some aspects don't come together all that well.
"Our world appeared puny and finite compared to the world of the bees"
chaos-rampant3 July 2009
Amazing title for a movie, no? It's what made me get it in the first place, that and the promise of weird. They weren't lying. What the hell was that? Something about Mesopotamian bees, souls living inside weapons, the land of the dead in the Moon, Cain, the Trinity site, the tower of Babel, and a planet TV transmitting the dead of the future inside the Garden of Eden Cave which (the dead) are giant bees. There's also stuff about a Supranormal Film Society trying to capture the dead on film in the 1920's, the letter X, missiles turning into flying saucers, a beekeeper who is murdered by his own bees, and the cities of the dead.
It sounds like a big ball of spiritual-cum-metaphysical hogwash at first and well... it still sounds like a big ball of hogwash in the end, but somewhere along the way, if you resign yourself to the distinct possibility that there's no profound meaning to be gleaned and that if there is meaning it's flying way over your head, that racking your brain to connect pieces that don't really seem to fit together in any meaningful way and sound more like a science fiction mythological journey, if you can accept it as such and go with it, the movie can still be enjoyed both for the hallucinogenic trance it's prone to inflict if given enough room and the lyrical prose. Every now and then something beautiful comes along ("the graveyards where the new words are born") that doesn't make much sense but it's still beautiful.
It's all narrated by someone who sounds a lot like Nobody from DEAD MAN (and a lot of what he says sound like something a spaced-out Nobody of the future would say).
IMDb says it's a documentary but it's not. It reads more like the transcripts of some philosophizing drug fiend who dropped acid and walked around in the New Mexico desert and came back to write about it.
Here are some excerpts:
"our world was puny and finite in comparison with the world of the bees"
"one of the dead of the future arrived... it was grotesque with four brains on a single body."
"I lived in a mad tower above Trinity site, the day of my death the other dead came to visit me, and they said the bees would come to live there and the flying saucers so you will know that through the grace of God, the maker of people, his Son the saviour of the Christians and those bees who swarmed through the air that though you were dead you were born Zoltan Abbashid on July 11 1882. This was true."
"the first place you stop after you die is the pulsating place which is designed to be familiar for people who used to have bodies. I became a short poem in the language of Cain. I would get my new body after I killed."
"I followed my enemies through the bee television and arrived over Bashra, Southern Iraq, in the year 1991. Now I was going to kill. That was my job."
This played over a combination of grainy stock footage, footage of a guy walking around New Mexico in a beekeeper's suit, and dated video SFX.
It sounds like a big ball of spiritual-cum-metaphysical hogwash at first and well... it still sounds like a big ball of hogwash in the end, but somewhere along the way, if you resign yourself to the distinct possibility that there's no profound meaning to be gleaned and that if there is meaning it's flying way over your head, that racking your brain to connect pieces that don't really seem to fit together in any meaningful way and sound more like a science fiction mythological journey, if you can accept it as such and go with it, the movie can still be enjoyed both for the hallucinogenic trance it's prone to inflict if given enough room and the lyrical prose. Every now and then something beautiful comes along ("the graveyards where the new words are born") that doesn't make much sense but it's still beautiful.
It's all narrated by someone who sounds a lot like Nobody from DEAD MAN (and a lot of what he says sound like something a spaced-out Nobody of the future would say).
IMDb says it's a documentary but it's not. It reads more like the transcripts of some philosophizing drug fiend who dropped acid and walked around in the New Mexico desert and came back to write about it.
Here are some excerpts:
"our world was puny and finite in comparison with the world of the bees"
"one of the dead of the future arrived... it was grotesque with four brains on a single body."
"I lived in a mad tower above Trinity site, the day of my death the other dead came to visit me, and they said the bees would come to live there and the flying saucers so you will know that through the grace of God, the maker of people, his Son the saviour of the Christians and those bees who swarmed through the air that though you were dead you were born Zoltan Abbashid on July 11 1882. This was true."
"the first place you stop after you die is the pulsating place which is designed to be familiar for people who used to have bodies. I became a short poem in the language of Cain. I would get my new body after I killed."
"I followed my enemies through the bee television and arrived over Bashra, Southern Iraq, in the year 1991. Now I was going to kill. That was my job."
This played over a combination of grainy stock footage, footage of a guy walking around New Mexico in a beekeeper's suit, and dated video SFX.
"2001: A Space Odyssey" on a home movie budget
falconcitypaul4 April 2008
"Wax" is very likely the oddest film I've ever seen. Marvelously, beautifully, lyrically, and profoundly intellectually stimulating in all respects. Breathtaking in its scope and achievement. But very odd.
I have read medical reports containing sodium pentathol interviews and transcripts of schizophrenics' monologues. I have read memoirs and fiction by schizophrenics and hard drug users. I have read Surrealist and Beat Movement literature. I have read James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. I have read the visionary poetry of Charles Williams and H.D.
I have watched films by Kenneth Anger and David Lynch and Maya Daren. I have read Yoruba ethnic literature from West Africa and studied Aleister Crowley's skryings on the Enochian aethyrs. I have read H. P. Lovecraft and also Kenneth Grant's post-Crowleyan magickal writings describing journeys behind the Tree of Life which would have preempted H.P.L.'s usual nightmares had he but known of them.
"Wax" stands tall in that company. A hypnotic, hallucinatory, purely poetic fusion of words, images, political ideas, and mystical transformations, nothing quite resembles it. "Pi" (1998) tried for something as distinctive, but that film gave us a glowering, paranoid, tortured vision shot in deliberately painful close-ups. "Wax" makes a complete contrast in its joyful freedom of eloquence in narration and visuals.
"Wax" enhances life while critiquing it. The film employs early, simple computer graphics. It juggles idiosyncratic desert architecture, prosaic photography, and absurd juxtapositions of common images.
It tells a story of Middle Eastern honey bees along with offering a hard view of the original U.S. military actions against Iraq in 1991 (a time so simple in retrospect as to seem the good old days). It links Los Alamos with transformations in consciousness. "Wax" leaps beyond the merely political in its luminous metaphors for human existence.
You can find stronger films, more beautiful films, more linguistically spry films, but you will probably never find anything quite like this fireworks display of language and image. Think "2001: A Space Odyssey" on a home movie budget. Your grasp of reality (and cinema) may never feel the same.
I have read medical reports containing sodium pentathol interviews and transcripts of schizophrenics' monologues. I have read memoirs and fiction by schizophrenics and hard drug users. I have read Surrealist and Beat Movement literature. I have read James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. I have read the visionary poetry of Charles Williams and H.D.
I have watched films by Kenneth Anger and David Lynch and Maya Daren. I have read Yoruba ethnic literature from West Africa and studied Aleister Crowley's skryings on the Enochian aethyrs. I have read H. P. Lovecraft and also Kenneth Grant's post-Crowleyan magickal writings describing journeys behind the Tree of Life which would have preempted H.P.L.'s usual nightmares had he but known of them.
"Wax" stands tall in that company. A hypnotic, hallucinatory, purely poetic fusion of words, images, political ideas, and mystical transformations, nothing quite resembles it. "Pi" (1998) tried for something as distinctive, but that film gave us a glowering, paranoid, tortured vision shot in deliberately painful close-ups. "Wax" makes a complete contrast in its joyful freedom of eloquence in narration and visuals.
"Wax" enhances life while critiquing it. The film employs early, simple computer graphics. It juggles idiosyncratic desert architecture, prosaic photography, and absurd juxtapositions of common images.
It tells a story of Middle Eastern honey bees along with offering a hard view of the original U.S. military actions against Iraq in 1991 (a time so simple in retrospect as to seem the good old days). It links Los Alamos with transformations in consciousness. "Wax" leaps beyond the merely political in its luminous metaphors for human existence.
You can find stronger films, more beautiful films, more linguistically spry films, but you will probably never find anything quite like this fireworks display of language and image. Think "2001: A Space Odyssey" on a home movie budget. Your grasp of reality (and cinema) may never feel the same.
classical
pkitten2k7 March 2001
This movie is so clearly a christmas classic that i can barely contain myself! Please, make this movie a part of your family's traditional holidayic behavior. Watch it while you wrap the presents, and for a truly quixotic effect, watch it backwards when you unwrap them.
I think that this movie has also taught my "dog" how to talk. I have showed him this movie (privately) over fourteen hundred thousand times and now he can speak. Of course, he doesn't vocalize his speech: he transmits it through the air-but i think that this is still somehow remarkable (I think).
He is telling me to write this: -------- I am so hungry please feed me. Please. I am starving. I need to eat. I am so skinny I that can barely move. Don't hit me anymore. It only hurts and makes me sleepy enough to fall into some reverie. --------
Well, better go feed the pup! (10 out of 10 stars.)
I think that this movie has also taught my "dog" how to talk. I have showed him this movie (privately) over fourteen hundred thousand times and now he can speak. Of course, he doesn't vocalize his speech: he transmits it through the air-but i think that this is still somehow remarkable (I think).
He is telling me to write this: -------- I am so hungry please feed me. Please. I am starving. I need to eat. I am so skinny I that can barely move. Don't hit me anymore. It only hurts and makes me sleepy enough to fall into some reverie. --------
Well, better go feed the pup! (10 out of 10 stars.)
no more weird than cnn
antifilm-127 November 2007
just wanted to add that i really like the video, and i think its no more weird than any television talk show or game show or news show or presidential election show: it mixes up a lot (in our heads i mean), but the confusion comes from the matter, not from the artist.
it's full of speculations and confusing plot points, as part of what it is about. in fact it was the only movie i ever saw, that was able to both analyze and illustrate the TV strategies of war reporting since operation desert storm (which it is exactly about) and the beginning new world order. that's maybe what seems technically overwrought?
seems to me, other artists like godard or kitano work the same way, merging so many images, synthezising so many parts of life, in the end you're overwhelmed. because we are not used to watch movies that way. because there is little chance to see stuff like this in cinemas.
thx for your attention. ;)
it's full of speculations and confusing plot points, as part of what it is about. in fact it was the only movie i ever saw, that was able to both analyze and illustrate the TV strategies of war reporting since operation desert storm (which it is exactly about) and the beginning new world order. that's maybe what seems technically overwrought?
seems to me, other artists like godard or kitano work the same way, merging so many images, synthezising so many parts of life, in the end you're overwhelmed. because we are not used to watch movies that way. because there is little chance to see stuff like this in cinemas.
thx for your attention. ;)
superliminal film
melinda200118 November 2002
i gave it 3/10 and even that's a gift. the strange thing is that i can't keep myself from suggesting certain people see it. hopefully you're not one of them. the quality is impossibly bad yet somehow some elements sort of stuck in my brain. if you figure out what that's about, let me know?
This surreal film is not for everyone
Buddybaba12 January 2007
We showed this at our local Art film movie-house. It is where it belongs.
Watch it if you think that David Cronenberg's adaptation of Burrough's book, "Naked Lunch," is too linear. If you don't know who William Burroughs is definitely avoid this. This has more to do with surrealist dream films than documentaries.
Delightfully mad IMHO.
Bees, Bouroughs, Book of the Dead. Egyptian myth.
Anti-War Sci-Fi Cyberpunk "My dead wife was in the hive. She fragmented." "They were the dead and vengeance was their life." "I was Cain." "The Planet of Television, transmitting the dead."
It's all pretty schizophrenic. Jacob Maker, beekeeper, in the land of the dead and the garden of eden, Iraq.
Watch it if you think that David Cronenberg's adaptation of Burrough's book, "Naked Lunch," is too linear. If you don't know who William Burroughs is definitely avoid this. This has more to do with surrealist dream films than documentaries.
Delightfully mad IMHO.
Bees, Bouroughs, Book of the Dead. Egyptian myth.
Anti-War Sci-Fi Cyberpunk "My dead wife was in the hive. She fragmented." "They were the dead and vengeance was their life." "I was Cain." "The Planet of Television, transmitting the dead."
It's all pretty schizophrenic. Jacob Maker, beekeeper, in the land of the dead and the garden of eden, Iraq.
The Most Painful `85' Minutes of My Life
cj4ta10 October 2002
I don't remember much of the plot of this one, probably because most of my memories of that experience are probably repressed. Until this point in my life, I didn't think it was possible to effectively torture someone with sight and sound alone.
One of my college teachers showed this to our class for reasons which to this day I don't even begin to ponder. I do remember that perhaps a third of the class was asleep throughout most of the `films' duration. Personally, I'm not the type to sleep through ANY movie unless I'm extremely tired, but I did find out that choosing to stare at the ceiling or ground for three hours was at least as interesting as looking straight ahead to the projected image.
Unfortunately I still heard it.
One of my college teachers showed this to our class for reasons which to this day I don't even begin to ponder. I do remember that perhaps a third of the class was asleep throughout most of the `films' duration. Personally, I'm not the type to sleep through ANY movie unless I'm extremely tired, but I did find out that choosing to stare at the ceiling or ground for three hours was at least as interesting as looking straight ahead to the projected image.
Unfortunately I still heard it.
antiwar
Highway-612 July 2001
it's a weird movie but maybe a little bit less so if you think about it as having a kind-of antiwar message -- the guy gets so overwhelmed by guilt over the job he does that he basically loses his mind and imagines himself to be a missile that doesn't want to hit its target.
or, another way of thinking about it is, what would happen if weapons could be haunted by the people that they kill? in order to do that you have to make the weapons into living things, which is a big part of where the movie's weirdness comes from, but at the same time there's a real valid point to it, i think -- which is that it asks us to think about the way we wage war, which is shown on t.v. so that it seems not to have a cost in human lives, when in fact, of course, the toll in human life of wars like desert storm is extraordinary and tragic.
i think the movie DOES get a little overwrought with its technical events from time to time, but i think too that it DOES have a basic message that helps to understand it, and it'd be a shame if that message was missed because i think, whatever its flaws, it conveys and explores that message (about the human toll of "pushbutton" or antiseptic modern wars) brilliantly.
oh, and it made MY dog talk, too. how about that? i'm convinced anyone who sees this movie seven times can be deemed legally insane. having said all i said above, i have to admit that this is probably the absolute STRANGEST movie i've ever seen, and i've seen some strange ones. i liked it anyway, though.
or, another way of thinking about it is, what would happen if weapons could be haunted by the people that they kill? in order to do that you have to make the weapons into living things, which is a big part of where the movie's weirdness comes from, but at the same time there's a real valid point to it, i think -- which is that it asks us to think about the way we wage war, which is shown on t.v. so that it seems not to have a cost in human lives, when in fact, of course, the toll in human life of wars like desert storm is extraordinary and tragic.
i think the movie DOES get a little overwrought with its technical events from time to time, but i think too that it DOES have a basic message that helps to understand it, and it'd be a shame if that message was missed because i think, whatever its flaws, it conveys and explores that message (about the human toll of "pushbutton" or antiseptic modern wars) brilliantly.
oh, and it made MY dog talk, too. how about that? i'm convinced anyone who sees this movie seven times can be deemed legally insane. having said all i said above, i have to admit that this is probably the absolute STRANGEST movie i've ever seen, and i've seen some strange ones. i liked it anyway, though.
A surprisingly moral film about karma, forgiveness and redemption
jennyhor200421 September 2012
Warning: Spoilers
One of my favourite science fiction films since I first saw it in the mid-1990s on video loan from the University of Wollongong, "Wax or the Discovery of Television among the Bees" is a home movie featuring inventive computer animation, archived film reels, stills, experimental filming methods, not a little humour and some live action; together these illustrate an unusual science fiction plot of body horror, a murder mission, a particular view of history (especially the history of communication technology, Iraq, World War I and the travails of the Jewish people) and an existence beyond death.
The film tells the story of Jacob Maker (director David Blair), a disaffected nuclear technician at the Los Alamos nuclear science laboratory who feels guilty that his work in designing and testing remote-controlled missile guidance systems leads to refined mass slaughter; he tries to cope with the dissonance he feels between the nature of his work and his need to support himself and his wife by spending afternoons communing with his hive of bees. These are no ordinary bees: they're descended from a special breed of honey-makers brought back from Iraq, then British Mesopotamia, by Jacob's grandfather James Hive Maker (William S Burroughs – yes, that William S Burroughs, famous junkie and novelist!) and his wife's grandfather in 1917. One day while in a trance with his bees, Jacob receives an unexpected gift that totally transforms his life: the bees penetrate his head through his ear and punch the Bee TV into his brain. The Bee TV gives him a mission and a purpose in life: the universe is unbalanced and he must restore the balance by killing someone.
So a strange odyssey begins: Jacob ventures out into a missile test area, following the directions of the Bee TV, where he comes to The Garden of Eden Cave where he finds giant bees related to his Mesopotamian friends living in the Land of the Dead. Revelations about his family history, the true nature of his bees and details of his mission, including the identity of his victim, come to him. He may be the reincarnation of his wife's grandfather Zoltan Abbasid who married James Hive Maker's half-sister, a former telephonist, inventor of a kind of telescope and enthusiastic member of a society dedicated to communicating with the dead. James was jealous of Abbasid and arranged for him to be killed by his bees so he, James, could inherit Abbasid's bees. After death Jacob passes through lives in other dimensions before he is transformed into a missile sent to kill the reincarnations of those responsible for Abbasid's death, now living in Iraq on the eve of the first US invasion of that country in 1991.
It's a hokey story, yes, but one made serious and even plausible by the first-person / stream-of-consciousness point-of-view documentary style of narrative structure, presented in a casual, monotone and above all calm voice by Blair himself. Superficially linear in its story-telling, the plot flips back and forth between past and present, and between present and future, and presents a bewildering mish-mash of philosophies and mythology including esoteric occultism and spiritualism, Bible stories, motifs and themes, belief in karma and reincarnation, and New Age ideas about the karmic connections among the living that continue into their next lives after they have died. Startling and unusual computer animation tricks flip the screen, roll it, spin it around and even turn it into silhouettes of lever-arch folders to simulate the movements of birds and other flying creatures. Animated images can look quite dated but are still very inventive and Blair and his wife, both computer programmers, use them cleverly to create three-dimensional figures and geometrical shapes and patterns, and to emphasise the alien nature of the bees, the Bee TV and the worlds they normally inhabit.
The information overload fleshes out the very bizarre story of karma and transcendence with the goal of atonement and redemption for past sins and the love for humanity that overcomes violence and death. The joining of Jacob, Zoltan Abbasid and their two bomb victims after death suggests forgiveness on both sides. Karma works in such a way that those who kill with violence will themselves be punished with death by violence, as the dead seek vengeance on those who kill them. Jacob himself is both victim and murderer or is it the other way around? In its own, rather flat way, "Wax " turns out to be a surprisingly moral and political film. It passes no judgement on the morality of the Iraq War or the wars that follow in its wake but it does suggest that those who kill may themselves be killed in the same way if not in this life, then in the next.
Repeated viewings are needed to understand the film more fully; each repeat reveals something new and unexpected humour emerges as well – how can there be telephones to dial the emergency number even in the deepest caves or the most barren deserts? Those overwhelmed by the many esoteric references that relate to nothing in their current lives (to say nothing of what they might have experienced before their birth and what will greet them in their next lives) can just relax and enjoy the strangest of strange head trips.
The film tells the story of Jacob Maker (director David Blair), a disaffected nuclear technician at the Los Alamos nuclear science laboratory who feels guilty that his work in designing and testing remote-controlled missile guidance systems leads to refined mass slaughter; he tries to cope with the dissonance he feels between the nature of his work and his need to support himself and his wife by spending afternoons communing with his hive of bees. These are no ordinary bees: they're descended from a special breed of honey-makers brought back from Iraq, then British Mesopotamia, by Jacob's grandfather James Hive Maker (William S Burroughs – yes, that William S Burroughs, famous junkie and novelist!) and his wife's grandfather in 1917. One day while in a trance with his bees, Jacob receives an unexpected gift that totally transforms his life: the bees penetrate his head through his ear and punch the Bee TV into his brain. The Bee TV gives him a mission and a purpose in life: the universe is unbalanced and he must restore the balance by killing someone.
So a strange odyssey begins: Jacob ventures out into a missile test area, following the directions of the Bee TV, where he comes to The Garden of Eden Cave where he finds giant bees related to his Mesopotamian friends living in the Land of the Dead. Revelations about his family history, the true nature of his bees and details of his mission, including the identity of his victim, come to him. He may be the reincarnation of his wife's grandfather Zoltan Abbasid who married James Hive Maker's half-sister, a former telephonist, inventor of a kind of telescope and enthusiastic member of a society dedicated to communicating with the dead. James was jealous of Abbasid and arranged for him to be killed by his bees so he, James, could inherit Abbasid's bees. After death Jacob passes through lives in other dimensions before he is transformed into a missile sent to kill the reincarnations of those responsible for Abbasid's death, now living in Iraq on the eve of the first US invasion of that country in 1991.
It's a hokey story, yes, but one made serious and even plausible by the first-person / stream-of-consciousness point-of-view documentary style of narrative structure, presented in a casual, monotone and above all calm voice by Blair himself. Superficially linear in its story-telling, the plot flips back and forth between past and present, and between present and future, and presents a bewildering mish-mash of philosophies and mythology including esoteric occultism and spiritualism, Bible stories, motifs and themes, belief in karma and reincarnation, and New Age ideas about the karmic connections among the living that continue into their next lives after they have died. Startling and unusual computer animation tricks flip the screen, roll it, spin it around and even turn it into silhouettes of lever-arch folders to simulate the movements of birds and other flying creatures. Animated images can look quite dated but are still very inventive and Blair and his wife, both computer programmers, use them cleverly to create three-dimensional figures and geometrical shapes and patterns, and to emphasise the alien nature of the bees, the Bee TV and the worlds they normally inhabit.
The information overload fleshes out the very bizarre story of karma and transcendence with the goal of atonement and redemption for past sins and the love for humanity that overcomes violence and death. The joining of Jacob, Zoltan Abbasid and their two bomb victims after death suggests forgiveness on both sides. Karma works in such a way that those who kill with violence will themselves be punished with death by violence, as the dead seek vengeance on those who kill them. Jacob himself is both victim and murderer or is it the other way around? In its own, rather flat way, "Wax " turns out to be a surprisingly moral and political film. It passes no judgement on the morality of the Iraq War or the wars that follow in its wake but it does suggest that those who kill may themselves be killed in the same way if not in this life, then in the next.
Repeated viewings are needed to understand the film more fully; each repeat reveals something new and unexpected humour emerges as well – how can there be telephones to dial the emergency number even in the deepest caves or the most barren deserts? Those overwhelmed by the many esoteric references that relate to nothing in their current lives (to say nothing of what they might have experienced before their birth and what will greet them in their next lives) can just relax and enjoy the strangest of strange head trips.
Surreal Masterpiece for Poetic Film Buffs
torymiller200015 October 2013
Warning: Spoilers
This film deserves another decent review. This is a surrealist kind of film. If you like art house films, proceed. If you like American blockbuster films stay away. This film moves slowly, has no special effects. It is not narrated by Leiv Shriber or Morgan Freeman. This film is really for someone who wants to delve into poetic film making, someone who doesn't mind moving at this slower more thoughtful pace.
This is a highly regarded cult film. Poetic in its tone, and relevant still. It was made in 1991, so this is a fascinating look at bees, poetic filmmaking and the potentially political message, although I see this film as an art film most of all.
so please, do not watch if you need a typical narrative and lots of action. very exciting for this poet to take in!!
This is a highly regarded cult film. Poetic in its tone, and relevant still. It was made in 1991, so this is a fascinating look at bees, poetic filmmaking and the potentially political message, although I see this film as an art film most of all.
so please, do not watch if you need a typical narrative and lots of action. very exciting for this poet to take in!!
A movie from an for bees.
summerloud6 August 2021
Just when i thought i had already seen all the super weird movies that suit a psychedelic movie night, along comes this gem. Total disorientation. Strange fascination. Reprogramming of pathways long disconnected way back by the dead on the moon created by the bees of kain, slayer of abel, inventor of the secret language that would one day come back to fulfill the destiny of creating a simulation of consciousness made from living symbols that contain the souls of the dead of the future in the form of bees from the garden of eden which refers to a cave that exists in the past inside a planet at the end of time and space itself that is folded into a telescope to insert the robotic target seeking consciousness of blind insectoid gods into missiles to come back to the place where my half brother used to live when he was a contractor for a company with ties to the US military that was founded by the grandmother of his stepsister to launch weapons loaded with the embodimend of the mind of kain who slew his brother abel out of jealousy for his bees, to fulfill his destiny of merging with his target in the first iraq war.
It all makes sense at the end.
It all makes sense at the end.
The worst movie i've ever watched to completion
yellowpig-8746122 July 2022
I genuinely struggle to even call this a movie. It's better described as a paranoid-schizophrenic recording himself in the desert for an hour and a half with about 20 minutes dedicated to early 90s CGI of abstract shapes as the narrator drones on and on and on about absolutely nothing.
While there are some moments of "So bad it's good" they do not even come close to justifying sitting through this mess.
Avoid this film like the plague and Spend your precious 85 minutes on literally anything other than this.
While there are some moments of "So bad it's good" they do not even come close to justifying sitting through this mess.
Avoid this film like the plague and Spend your precious 85 minutes on literally anything other than this.
A Very Strange Film
debtman19 January 2001
This is a very strange movie. I'm not even sure that I can accurately describe the plot, because it doesn't make any sense and I don't know if it's really a plot anyway. But I'll give it a shot. I rented this based on the quotes on the box, which described it as being like Total Recall, only with 10 times the weirdness. After seeing the movie, I don't know what they were talking about... The whole movie is narrated by David Blair in a very monotone voice, and has no similarities to Total Recall that I see...
The movie starts out with James Maker, who is a member of something called the Supernormal Film Society whos goal is to film the spirits of the dead walking among the living. There's some background on this which seems largely irrelevant. Then we meet his grandson, Jacob Maker who is the main character of this story. Jacob is a programmer who works on aircraft simulation programs. He's also a beekeeper of Mesopotamian bees he inherited from his grandfather.
So, after a bit the bees drill a hole in his head and put in a television, which the bees use to start showing him things. About this time, a statue of Kane outside his house kills the statue of Able, and Kane is marked with the X symbol. Then at work, Jacob wonders why his co-workers never wonder what happens to the missiles they launch that don't come back (never mind that a programmer probably doesn't deal with missile launches), and he realizes that they turn into flying saucers which fly to the moon where the dead live.
About this time, the bees start showing him things on the television and he makes a big pilgrimage to the Garden of Eden Cave which the bees tell him is the entrance to the world of the dead. Jacob then realizes that the bees are actually the dead of the future, and goes to the cave. Although it is a 40 miles walk through the desert, he makes the journey a bit easier by becoming a bomb part of the way. He then learns that he has to kill someone to fulfill his destiny, which is to be reborn in a wax body that the bees make in the cave.
When arriving at the cave, Jacob learns that the cave is actually the entrance to a planet inside of our planet where the bees live. There, he dies and goes to join the world of the dead. For a while, he becomes the X symbol. Then he becomes a poem in the language of Kane. Then he travels to some other planets, including the Planet of Television. Next he becomes a rival beekeeper of his grandfather. Then he decides it's time to fulfill his destiny, which is to kill someone. So, he becomes a bomb and blows up two Iraqi soldiers in a tank. Then he becomes the X symbol with himself, his grandfather's arch enemy, and the two soldiers he blew up.
And that's pretty much it... Make sense? No, I didn't think so... David Blair calls this Independent Electronic Cinema. I don't know what to call it. I can't figure out if this movie is bad because the weirdness of it all is hard to get over. And the filming is worse... One could today make this movie on a home PC fairly easy. There are 3 distinct types of footage in the movie. First, there is a lot of stock footage of bees, bombs, and other scenes. Second, there is footage that was shot with an amateur camera I'm guessing. Third, there were digital renderings. Nothing fancy, these were things like 3D letters and symbols, and renderings of the cave ceiling and floor just on the screen with a black background.
And it's heavily edited. I hesitate to refer to this as special effects, as I think it's overly abused. There is not a point where more than 1 minute goes by without further senseless video effects. Things like the image warping, folding, unraveling into a string, blurring, etc. Basically all the stuff you could do to a movie with a piece of $100 modern software and a video capture card. And it took six years to make. Personally, I don't see what makes this a great art film, as I've seen some reviews and essays claim it is. I think it falls into the trap of being so different and bizarre that people figure it must be artistic. I don't know what the hell it is, and I don't think I ever will. I keep thinking that there must be some meaning in this movie, but I haven't the slightest idea what...
The movie starts out with James Maker, who is a member of something called the Supernormal Film Society whos goal is to film the spirits of the dead walking among the living. There's some background on this which seems largely irrelevant. Then we meet his grandson, Jacob Maker who is the main character of this story. Jacob is a programmer who works on aircraft simulation programs. He's also a beekeeper of Mesopotamian bees he inherited from his grandfather.
So, after a bit the bees drill a hole in his head and put in a television, which the bees use to start showing him things. About this time, a statue of Kane outside his house kills the statue of Able, and Kane is marked with the X symbol. Then at work, Jacob wonders why his co-workers never wonder what happens to the missiles they launch that don't come back (never mind that a programmer probably doesn't deal with missile launches), and he realizes that they turn into flying saucers which fly to the moon where the dead live.
About this time, the bees start showing him things on the television and he makes a big pilgrimage to the Garden of Eden Cave which the bees tell him is the entrance to the world of the dead. Jacob then realizes that the bees are actually the dead of the future, and goes to the cave. Although it is a 40 miles walk through the desert, he makes the journey a bit easier by becoming a bomb part of the way. He then learns that he has to kill someone to fulfill his destiny, which is to be reborn in a wax body that the bees make in the cave.
When arriving at the cave, Jacob learns that the cave is actually the entrance to a planet inside of our planet where the bees live. There, he dies and goes to join the world of the dead. For a while, he becomes the X symbol. Then he becomes a poem in the language of Kane. Then he travels to some other planets, including the Planet of Television. Next he becomes a rival beekeeper of his grandfather. Then he decides it's time to fulfill his destiny, which is to kill someone. So, he becomes a bomb and blows up two Iraqi soldiers in a tank. Then he becomes the X symbol with himself, his grandfather's arch enemy, and the two soldiers he blew up.
And that's pretty much it... Make sense? No, I didn't think so... David Blair calls this Independent Electronic Cinema. I don't know what to call it. I can't figure out if this movie is bad because the weirdness of it all is hard to get over. And the filming is worse... One could today make this movie on a home PC fairly easy. There are 3 distinct types of footage in the movie. First, there is a lot of stock footage of bees, bombs, and other scenes. Second, there is footage that was shot with an amateur camera I'm guessing. Third, there were digital renderings. Nothing fancy, these were things like 3D letters and symbols, and renderings of the cave ceiling and floor just on the screen with a black background.
And it's heavily edited. I hesitate to refer to this as special effects, as I think it's overly abused. There is not a point where more than 1 minute goes by without further senseless video effects. Things like the image warping, folding, unraveling into a string, blurring, etc. Basically all the stuff you could do to a movie with a piece of $100 modern software and a video capture card. And it took six years to make. Personally, I don't see what makes this a great art film, as I've seen some reviews and essays claim it is. I think it falls into the trap of being so different and bizarre that people figure it must be artistic. I don't know what the hell it is, and I don't think I ever will. I keep thinking that there must be some meaning in this movie, but I haven't the slightest idea what...
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