‘Colon: The Scatological Columbus Epic’ By Hal Hinson Washington Post Staff Writer November 05, 1992

Director: Sean Harris; Eric Gravley Cast: Victoria Reis; Sandra Bishop Not rated Compare prices for this movie Find local video stores More movie shopping Save money with NextCard Visa

And loving it.

The deficiencies in artistry or polish displayed by the filmmaking Betapunks in their challenging, exhilarating new work are more than made up for by their seemingly bottomless wellspring of inventiveness and moxie. The Betapunks -- D.C.'s postmodern, utopian, anarchist video guerrillas -- is the writing-directing-marketing team made up of Sean Harris (a k a Spikey Blue) and Eric Gravley (a k a Ingo Tusk). And given the limitations of time, budget and equipment, "Colon," the team's self-described "Scatological Columbus Epic," is a small miracle of wild, uncensored imagination.

The creators call "Colon" a "psychosexual satire of Christopher Columbus, who returns to the District of Columbia in 1992 to face-lift his reputation." But that's just skimming the surface. It's also a protest film, aimed at Hollywood and the previous two lavish, big-budget white elephants -- the atrociously bad one with Marlon Brando and the ravishingly dull one by Ridley Scott -- and an anti-male diatribe designed to point out the link between male sexual oppression of women and imperialism; a spoof/essay on history, gold, detective shows, explorers and artists and all other varieties of romantic dreamers; and a corner of just about every other subject imaginable.

On one level, the B-punks are wiggy pranksters with an impulse to shock and a balancing sense of precocious play. Their movies are so dense with impudent existential spritzing and sidewalk surrealism, so like a Chinese puzzle box of aphorisms, poems and off-rhythm vignettes, that they nearly defy summary -- that is, after only two viewings.

But "Colon" rewards multiple viewings. What movie wouldn't with an exchange like the following?

"Look at the sky. It's leaking. And men think it's a chance to sell sunglasses."

Or: "How're things going with Richard?" says one woman to another.

"Polynesian," says the other woman.

"Pacific?" asks her friend.

"Not exactly atomic bombs on Bikini Island."

If "Uncle Paddy's Wake," the B-punks' first video feature, owed a stylistic debt to Hal Hartley, "Colon" is the godchild of late-period Jean-Luc Godard, whose deliriously free-associative films trampoline between sense and nonsense. It's as one of their characters -- a poetry student named Laurie (Victoria Reis) around whom shards of the story orbit -- says to a certain Marco Polo (played here by Sandra Bishop): "Are you filled with crazy ideas? You need a dose of reality."

To which Marco Polo responds, "Reality needs a dose of ideas."

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