As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty · reception & legacy
2000 · Jonas Mekas
How As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
In 2000 it was a marathon diary film that barely traveled beyond avant-garde circles and Mekas devotees; two decades later it's become one of the highest-rated films on Letterboxd, a strange and lovely case of a nearly five-hour experimental home movie getting canonised by a generation Mekas never edited it for.
What's debated
Fans argue over whether its stratospheric rating reflects a genuine masterpiece or pure selection bias — only the already-converted make it through five hours of home footage — with skeptics calling it sentimental self-indulgence and defenders calling that the entire point.
Its footprint
Mekas's hand-written intertitles and murmured Lithuanian-accented narration — 'nothing happens in this film,' the meditations on memory and 'brief glimpses of beauty' — are endlessly screencapped and quoted in Letterboxd reviews, where finishing the film and posting a tearful write-up has become a small rite of passage.
Where it stands
A cult endurance-watch turned Letterboxd darling — the rare avant-garde film people recommend to each other like a life event rather than a movie.