Watch The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome For Free

Waste of time

The Worst Film Ever

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

A lush creation by famous underground avant-garde film-maker Kenneth Anger, this film of a celebratory religious ritual mixes several of Anger's favourite themes and obsessions while remaining mysterious enough that it can be interpreted on a number of levels depending on the viewer's background and opinions. I can see here a fascination with the occult and its symbols and trappings, many of which look like deliberate parodies and send-ups of Christian ritual and symbolism, into which Anger has inserted his own interest in the work and philosophy of English mystic Aleister Crowley. There is also a sense of people creating their own selective mix of mythology and ritual. Coming from another angle again, I can see criticism of formal religion, a suggestion that ritualistic religious ceremony can be corrupted and rotting from within, as much a prison from which there's no escape except death, as it is a source of comfort and affirmation for its followers. In the midst of ecstatic communion, laughter and joy, there is also violence and an offer of a sacrifice to dark gods. The sacrifice could be interpreted as liberation as well, a release into a new clean world without sin and corruption. If we interpret the symbolism of "Inauguration ..." very broadly, the film also becomes a critique of Western culture and people's subjective notions of what is culturally acceptable and what is not.The actual film itself is set to the music of "Glagolitic Mass", a composition for solo voices, choir, organ and orchestra by Czech composer Leos Janacek, and could be seen as a very long music video. There's no dialogue at all, no background or other ambient sound. The film builds up steadily with static diorama-like scenes up to the moment where various participants consume an intoxicating drink and then the visuals explode into layered scenes of bursting, flaming colour and strange superimposed juxtapositions and combinations of repeating images, Hindu-god figures with green skin (a symbol of death), Egyptian gods and maenads (female acolytes of the Greek god Dionysius, lord of ecstasy) tearing apart a young man. The film's close, near-fetishistic attention to objects, the actors' elaborate costuming and studied appearance, and the staged, mannerly look of scene set-ups recall the equally camp kitsch film classics made by the Armenian film-maker Parajanov in the 1960s and 1980s.This is obviously not a film for everyone: much of it up to the 20th minute is slow and appears quite remote, not at all concerned about drawing viewers into its ritual and secrets. Characters are preoccupied with consuming rosary beads, a snake and a jewel. Religious rituals have never been about entertaining or informing viewers of their purpose after all; you're always assumed to have undergone some training or education in the religion's basic practices and knowledge and to receive further knowledge you have to be selected by the religion's standard bearers whose expectations of you and your conformity to its precepts may be severe. Eventually the film does immerse viewers into its realm but you need to interpret its goings-on for yourselves: there's no attempt to explain what's happening for the benefit of first-time participants in the ritual. Is the death scene of the young blond man a send-up of Christian Holy Communion ritual as well as a literal interpretation of Dionysian ritual? Is it a reference to the destruction of a particular worldview or civilisation? Is there the possibility of rebirth, that the death is but a necessary initiation step he must take into another (and better) plane of existence?People with no interest or appreciation for arcane religious ritual, veiled symbolism and the eclectic mixing of deities, figures and stories from different religious and folkloric traditions will be bored by the film and perhaps should pass it over but they will miss its layered symbolism and message of initiation, celebration, ecstasy, death and the hope of new life.

Anger's vision is a ritual in and of itself, committed to film to be enacted on each viewing. The colors were hypnotic at times. The homo-eroticism is simmering under the surface, mingled with so much symbolism that it is impossible to over-analyze it. Usually movies don't leave me feeling this awash in literally psychedelic thoughts, disconnected from the moment and yet fully a part of it's reckoning. Like the effect of Pulp Fiction on my subconscious vocabulary, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome left me thinking differently. There is some profound effect from watching it, I believe, pulling the viewer in as a participant.

Clocking in at just two minute short of the arbitrary divide between short film and feature length film as designated by the IMDb, this movie is quite a feast of color and imagination constantly rolling to hallucinatory lengths. That, of course, is the point.I didn't count, but I'm pretty sure all seven of the deadly sins are represented within this film, but there's a particular focus on gluttony and lust. Everything in this film is engorged, or seems engorged. It at first starts out a little like Puce Moment (and in fact, later a shot from Puce Moment is reused as one of the multiple exposures), but as the character we see literally consumes a pearl necklace, he's lead into what is apparently the Pleasure Dome, which is pretty much Hell filled with passion.The pacing of this film is pretty amazing. As more and more stuff happens it just builds up, a glutton for more, causing the need for more and more, and so on. Usually fast editing and multiple exposures are used as a way of showing the deconstruction of a character, but this time the fever dream seems more of a conglomeration of More and More in an appetizing pursuit to... more.It sounds exhausting, but is in fact actually quite pleasurable to watch. The presence of such colorful and vividly imagined characters brings it into a wonderful sort of clarity, making the whole movie tempting. It's tempting to join them in their lust, it's tempting to delve into such a realm. Which is why, at 38 minutes, it still seems like it's less than 20.--PolarisDiB

Quite possibly,the most incomprehensible film every made, Kenneth Anger's INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME deserves a place in cultural, if not film history. Arcane satanic references merged with bizarre hallucinogenic Egyptian rituals, and all done with a straight face, are endlessly fascinating to any student of the subculture of Hollywood and San Francisco in the post-war years. This was a time when to be gay or of a mixed gender was considered not just socially unacceptable, it was considered a sign of sickness. I don't think that a film like this could have been made without the cultural stigma associated with being part of the sexual underworld.As an 'experimental film,' though, it's not really that original. Anger borrows heavily from Cocteau, Luis Bunuel, Maya Deren and others, whose work was far more original and far less self-conscious. It nevertheless, amazingly I should say, holds your interest (since it's only 35 minutes, partially) and I would reccomend it to anyone interested in the fringes of the art world.