Begotten

dir. E. Elias Merhige
72 min. • 1989

Begotten has no characters in the ordinary sense. Its final credits name three principal figures:

God Killing Himself.

Mother Earth.

Son of Earth — Flesh on Bone

The entire film is what those names do to each other and to the earth. God Killing Himself tears open his body and dies. Mother Earth rises from what remains and takes his seed into herself. She gives birth to Son of Earth — Flesh on Bone. He is cast into a barren world, seized by the Nomads, tortured, killed, and briefly returned to life by his mother. The Nomads destroy her too. The Robed Figures gather what remains of mother and son, grind their bodies down, and return them to the soil. The ground flowers.