Sightlines · reception

How As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty was received

2000 · Jonas Mekas · As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty on Sightlines

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 canonized 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.

Did you know? The film runs nearly five hours and was assembled by Mekas from decades of his own 16mm home-movie footage of his family life in New York — a diary he'd been shooting for years with no film in mind, later edited into what he presents as a celebration of ordinary happiness.