The Secret Garden

“No filmmaker of the 1980s knew as much as Phil Solomon of affirming the importance of multiple layers in the visual production of images. Solomon perpetuates the Brakhagian tradition of creating a succession of images whose logic comes from a large number of rhythmic sources, formal, associative, and whose coherence passes from one source to another. Here, as with Brakhage, one must be spoiled in the trance offered by Solomon, and be sufficiently assured to follow a structure that is based as well on the melody, the harmonics and the flashes of metaphors as on a narrative plot. The Secret Garden is one of Solomon’s best films. Like Thornton and Klahr, there is the shadow of a story here, which has to do with the passage from innocence and experience to terror and ecstasy.” – T. Gunning.