Film Review: The Magnificent Self-Immolation of Menden Leavens

by "Nebby" Siit

The Magnificent Self-Immolation of Menden Leavens
Director: Deren Feck
Writer: Deren Feck, Ché (consulting)

The Magnificent Self-Immolation of Menden Leavens is a film about loving a world that is begging to burn. This is Deren Feck's first film since The Agitates of Furor, marking some 20 cycles between the two. It runs the standard 35 minutes, but taps into something timeless. And as Feck is wont to do, ruminates on the philosophies of GYIA, regarding perpetuity (the irony is not lost here).
     The story takes place from the perspective of Menden Leavens (played by recurring character-actor and life-long friend of Feck, Servil Jen), a young man growing in a world increasingly stark; day to day the world sloughs its beauty to accommodate the fickle wishes of man. As he becomes more and more aware of the dissonance in his life, a prophetic vision comes to him on the asphalt plains of a forgotten land, giving him the direction he hungers for.
     The film follows the typical arc of any Feck film: an ingratiating world exposed through the mundane (Menden's walk), the hand that man plays in it (the asphalt plains, seeing the needlessly dead), and the call to arms (the titular "Magnificent Self-Immolation").
     One could sit to reflect on the message of this film and sum it up within a review succinctly delineating its manifold meaning (which, admittedly, would take more than a "succinct review"). However, I believe that it is a better use of my time, and one could argue my responsibility, to educate the reader through the lens of The Magnificent Self-Immolation of Menden Leavens. Besides, it wouldn't be a true "Feckian" review if it didn't stoke the coals of a harder conversation.

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Feck's Magnificent raises questions in how we, as an audience, interact with the medium. These days, as in days in the past, there is a concern with labeling a film, or any work for that matter, as "good", or especially: a "favorite". When a film tickles a certain fancy, meets an expectation, or releases with refreshing bombast, it is easy for one to lay their laurels at its mound. "This is my favorite." "This is a good film." However, it is often the case that films such as these, what garner attention almost rabidly so, contain a rather vapid or super-condensed vision of their conceit's potential. That is to say, it would prove difficult to last the test of time because the film is scaffolded for easy, present consumption. When a work of any kind is crafted solely for an immediate response, its constitution remains weak, and its legs are blown out by the next work of its kind—"wash, rinse, repeat," to quote the ancient refrain.
     And in the end, we are none the better. For film to maintain any relevancy in our increasingly illiterate world, it must pass along the wisdom our forebears have worn their knuckles to bear to light. In an age where The Lathe of Aeschylus is misunderstood for a brand of tillage, being only some 30 cycles from its debut, what hope have we to remember recent scourges that have ravaged our weary spit of land? Before the Valley Deep and Darkest Tundra are merely names, losing their significance, and the fear that wrought those names into our tongue? A time of unencumbered relativity is upon us. Feck knows it, and shows us as much in the sequence prior to Menden's self-immolation. "I do not know this land, and it knows nothing of me," Menden says. "What left here is known? And what is best left unknown? A world no longer the world."
     Feck's film is not "good", it is not a "favorite", and you will be hard-pressed to find those who would have the mind to say so (perhaps shock-auth Phoebe Korb will have their shallow retort). What it is is foundational. A hallmark to our floundering age. I would argue a wake-up call, but it seems that Feck still struggles with communicating to the everyman; perhaps I am only preaching to my own choir, my own cultivation of a dying intelligentsia, a void. But I am not without hope, for the world's pangs often precede a birth, and should we remain vigilant and grounded in our perpetuity (with no ounce of irony) we will see the night through.
     "To live, to die, we live in cyclical wonder."

9/9

This work is replicated in identical to its original, as per the Culture-Safe dictates (9.4114) of Our Lady Diaspora, by the Curator Proper of Catacombian Wells (1.445).