'Begotten' as Terminal Cinema

This post is a sort of add-on or follow-up to Andrew Schenker's excellent article on "Terminal Cinema" over at Senses of Cinema - http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/08/47/terminal-cinema.html

Schenker uses some very good examples to illustrate his idea of terminal cinema in his article, and I found yet another example, Elias Merhige's Begotten.

Begotten is an experimental horror film with no dialogue and with a mythical resonance that is impossible to compare to any other. All the characters and situations are symbolic and echo creation myths from different cultures. There is a narrative somewhere in there, but it is made obscure through the lack of psychological motivation, reaction/POV shots and the aesthetic choices taken by the director with the photography and the editing. All frames of the film were treated individually until they became extremely grainy and with such high contrast that at times it's impossible to tell what you are looking at. As a film aesthetic, it is unrepeatable. There is no other film that could be shot this way, that could follow this style of filmmaking. The closest Merhige came to recreating the aesthetics of Begotten was on some of his music videos, commissions which he got on the strength of Begotten itself and could be seen as extensions of that film, rather than completely new works. Looking at his filmography over at imdb (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0580729/) we find that his plans for a trilogy didn't happen. Supposedly this was because of lack of funding, but honestly, how can another film follow Begotten's aesthetic?