Dark Star: H.R. Gigers World

HR Giger = the goat

An artist that channeled the dark side, at the end of his life, a glimpse of his realm, and his view on death.

It’s just as good as watching it on Netflix years ago very awesome insights

For such a dark and horrifying genre of art and film, dark star provides a strangely comforting sensation when you delve into the world of Mr. Gieger. As a fan of the “Alien” movies and of the art before and after done by H.R., this documentary gives a beautiful insight into his personal life and the successes and tragedies therein.

Great film of about the life and the final year of a truly visionary artist. The devotion of his wife Carmen and his personal staff is great to see, especially due to H.R.G.'s obviously unhealthy state at the time of this documentary.

This is a documentary about the late H.R. Giger. He was an artist that became very well known after his work in the Alien franchise.

Perfect

The documentary DARK STAR captures the elderly H.R. Giger as a shuffling, slow speaking man so physically frail that his every breath seems the exhalation of death. He lives in a horder’s house crammed to overflowing with books, and with an overgrown backyard that includes a sort of miniature ‘ghost train’ of his own design, and everywhere his artwork flickers and glides: brazenly placed, carelessly displayed, seen directly or perhaps noted quickly from the corner of your eye. Strangely rendered women with spiked nipples and corpse-like eyes. Disturbing, reptilian entities with grotesque mandibles. Piles of skulls and mottled, bloated infants. Egyptian and Babylonian styles mix with what Giger called “bio-mechanical” entities, part living beings, part machine. DARK STAR is not a biographical film. It does tell something of Giger’s personal life, most particularly of his first love, who committed suicide, and of his wives, and a little about his family. It also offers a small portrait of his parents, and Giger himself is seen as a young man via archival footage. But the focus is on the here and now, with Giger at times seeming entirely disengaged and at times spot on, making dry comments that allow us to see there’s still someone in there, alive behind the physical delicacy. And there is, of course, display of his art. Giger is generally described as a surrealist, but whatever the -ism, his vision is remarkably grotesque and almost always disturbing. He first gained notoriety for posters and then for album covers (most famously Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s BRAIN SALAD SURGERY; Debbie Harry’s KOOKOO; and the notorious inside-album poster, titled “Penis Landscape,” for The Dead Kennedys’ FRANKENCHRIST.) He is probably most widely known as the principle designer for the 1979 film ALIEN, with its uncomfortably organic look and remarkably effective monster, quite unlike anything that had been seen on film up to that time and still pretty much in a class of its own. These works get more than a mention, but there is more emphasis on Giger’s general body of work, and the film concludes with a sense of his own wonder at how he ever came to make such things and at the sheer volume and ultimate display of his work. He is very clearly in love with everything he has made. But DARK STAR does not really offer the answers fans of Giger’s work want. There is some background—Giger’s childhood toys included a human skull, and he was both terrified and fascinated by a mummy in a local museum—and it seems clear that he used his art as a means of confronting his darkest fears. But there’s no deep explanation, nothing that would satisfy questions about where, exactly, these frightening images come from. Perhaps Giger did not clearly understand it himself. Whatever the case, he keeps his mystery, saying little, explaining less, and if there were answers, he took them with him: he died at age 74, not long after filming for DARK STAR ended. This is a remarkably intriguing, yet entirely unpretentious, documentary, and fans of Giger’s art will no doubt find it fascinating. But a word of warning: if you don’t like Giger’s art, you’re unlikely to develop an enthusiasm for it from this film. (Me, I’m among those who find his work both fascinating and repellent; it interests me, but I wouldn’t have any of it in my house.) The DVD comes with a short “making of” documentary and several photograph collections of Giger’s work. Recommended. GFT, Amazon Reviewer