Visual Training (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #41 extract: Visual Training (1969)

Employing a powerful use of zooms and jump cuts that build a violent, cyclical rhythm, Visual Training seems to be a short film about a Freudian disaster; the ego distorts the world and the id feasts upon it. 

With eyes that bleed as a symbol of the self, we see our main character deteriorate from the inside out, his desire destroying him. With body language as a signifier of the ego, we see our main character disengage from the world and forfeit its sensations. With action as a force of the id, we see our main character sacrifice morality and consume all that he cannot process. The figure of this film is then the archetypal zombie: a brain dead consumer, who, in this specific tale, feeds on sexuality and the bodies of women. The question this poses is quite direct: Are we, an audience that consumes cinema, this man?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PduxpGsIGnY