Brackage 2

Between Brackage's "The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes" and Wiseman's "Titticut Follies" I had much to think about after the screenings. Without any audio (almost thankfully), Brackage's vivid documentary completely illustrates the word autopsy. I’ve much to say on Wiseman, but think it is better suited in discussion. Where I took many notes for Wiseman's piece, I could not bring myself to record what I was seeing in "The Act." Was it because I didn't want to miss anything I was seeing? I'm not sure... What I do know for sure is that what I was seeing was something not only quite gruesome but so so explorative. As I watched, and not by any means constantly, I realized that what I was seeing must be considered by those who do it to be an adventure.
Like a deep sea dive, once you know the waters, it's the various life and findings that differentiate the diver's experiences. The role of the autopsist, from what I gathered, is to split, dissect, collect and separate virtually every internal organ from each cadaver -- in the name of science. As the blood was being pumped out of the body cavity and they were cutting off and removing the chest plates, it was easy enough to forget that the process is indeed for a reason. How else would they strategically get to the brain but by making incisions along your back hair line and peeling your skull skin over your face? An autopsy is the only way to advantageously investigate death when there are uncertainties to the causes, circumstances.
I think the concluding scene establishes this reminder in the (generally awestruck) viewer, where the elderly autopsist (which we don't know how involved he is in the hands-on process) records a taped report of the investigation. His white lab coat bears only a few small splatters of blood, which the camera focuses in on. I liked that. It was an absolutely shameless inclusion of contrasting of the red, dark thickness of the inside of the body cavities, to the sterilized, clean whiteness of the room -- humans intact. Maybe there's something in the fact that the elderly man concluding the autopsy on the tape recorder could have very well been older than each of the numerous corpses filmed. Whether or not that was intentionally included, a film so unordinary and expository just grabs a hold of you, if you are willing to watch. During and after the film I thought of the material and re-told myself two things: “I want to be cremated,” and “I don't want to dream about this tonight.” Obviously I expected myself to have extreme difficulty forgetting a lot of the things I saw in the film. I was the most uncomfortable when they were dissecting a younger looking female corpse. Seeing her chest carved up and being dissected bothered me... I just didn’t like the thought of it. I wish I could explain it a little better. Regardless of how I uncomfortable I felt during the half hour film, it was so intriguing that I found myself talking to some people about it. Death, the one thing that none of us individually know about, really isn't what bothers us. Sure, the idea of being gone and our families and friends being devastated is horrible, but it is going to happen anyhow. Though I don't want my body carved up or disassembled, I still believe in the soul being an entity of its own, with different priorities after the death of my body. Still, I shudder at the thought of being on film, empty and being flopped around like in”The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes”.