Looking back on Brakhage’s The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes I am really surprised how much it hit people in the class. I understand that these were actual people being cut open, but as far as we know they died of natural causes and are having common procedure carried out of them. I even thought to myself (even in the previous response) that this film was different than conventional Hollywood brutality, but to be honest my view has changed. A few days ago I saw Hostel: Part 2 (Eli Roth), and this movie has crossed the line, and has definitely surpasses the gruesomeness of The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes in my opinion. The screenshot I captured demonstrates just how horrid Host: Part 2 gets. This was one of the worst scenes in the movie for me. Essentially, this scene acts out how an unknown buyer tortures Lorna (Heather Matarazzo), who is one of the main characters. This buyer undresses and lays in a bath tub and proceeds to cut Lorna up, appearing to gain sexual pleasure from the blood drenching her, and Lorna’s screams of pain. This scene was extremely hard for me to watch, and quite sick to entertain the idea that this could happen…and amazing that a large audience of people has seen this. Just because the story is fiction does not mean it really hits you on a different level. The effects are so real it is impossible to really distinguish between a fake cut in Hostel: Part 2 and a real cut in The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes. Additionally, through the narrative of a movie you personalize yourself with the characters, so there is at least a minimal emotional investment. The simple fact that you see these characters beg for their lives and scream in pain makes the viewing of their torture that much more graphic than Brakhage’s silent film. It seems difficult to call The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes a documentary when those images could have just as easily been in a Hollywood horror movie.