Slow movies: countering the cinema of action

209 Pages·2014·2.146 MB·English

by  Jaffe, Ira

“In all fi lm there’s the desire to capture the motion of life, to refuse S
immobility,” Agnès Varda has noted. But to capture the reality of human
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experience, cinema must fasten on stillness and inaction as much as motion. o
Slow Movies investigates movies by acclaimed directors who over the past
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three decades have challenged mainstream cinema’s reliance on motion and
action. More than other realist art cinema, slow movies by Lisandro Alonso,
S l o w M o v i e s
Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Pedro Costa, Jia Zhang-ke, Abbas Kiarostami, Cristian
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Mungiu, Alexander Sokurov, Béla Tarr, Gus Van Sant and others radically
adhere to space-times in which emotion is repressed along with motion, o
editing and dialogue yield to stasis and contemplation, and action gives way
v Countering the Cinema of Action
to emptiness if not death. Yet the cinematic artistry and integrity of slow
movies is here seen to foster a rare beauty and sense of affi rmation. i
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IRA JAFFE is founder and former chair of the Cinematic Arts department at the s u
University of New Mexico. He is the author of Hollywood Hybrids: Mixing Genres
in Contemporary Films (2008) and the co-editor of Redirecting the Gaze: Gender,
Theory and Cinema in the Third World (1999). IRA JAFFE
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“Out beyond the cacophony of summer blockbusters, re-booted fi lms, and the whirl of smart-
phone users, there is a collection of fi lmmakers quietly observing contemporary life through
a sparse and economical cinema. This study explores the history and aesthetics of these I
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slow fi lms, and how they counter the rendering of life in Hollywood. In economical prose it
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teases out not just a genre of slow fi lmmaking, but the philosophical implications of such

work, offering analysis of the emotional restraint, the suspension of time, and the austerity of J
aesthetics in slow fi lms. The result is a refl ection on an alternative to cinema’s dominant visual A
syntax, and how it speaks to the human condition.” – Eric Patrick, Northwestern University F
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“In a time of hypermodern acceleration in cinematic narrative, this volume turns a penetrating
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eye to fi lms that embody a transcendent and deeply probing slowness. Interpretive deliberation,
emptiness of moment and observation, virtuosity of meditation, the revelation of the long
take, and the patient angling of narrative gain new clarity – even radiance – in this important
analysis.” – Murray Pomerance, University of Toronto
“Given the often mindless fi lms that now rule the multiplex, where everything is constant
action, motion, and violence in a constant barrage of computer-generated frenzy, this
thoughtful, peaceful, transcendental book is a breath of fresh air, highlighting more
contemplative, insightful fi lms, offering a useful antidote to the nonstop kineticism of
mainstream modern cinema.” – Wheeler Winston Dixon, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
cover photo:
The Turin Horse (2011)
WALLFLOWER PRESS © TT Film / Vega Film /
Zero Friction Film
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S l o w M o v i e s
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S l o w M o v i e s
Countering the Cinema of Action
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I r a J a f f e
WALLFLOWER PRESS
LONDON & NEW YORK
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A Wallflower Press Book
Published by
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York • Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © Ira Jaffe 2014
All rights reserved.
Wallflower Press® is a registered trademark of Columbia University Press
A complete CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-231-16978-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-16979-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-85063-6 (e-book)
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-free paper.
This book is printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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C o n t e n t s
Introduction 1
Deadpan
Stranger Than Paradise, Dead Man and The Second Circle 15
Stillness
Elephant and Mother and Son 45
Long Shot
Distant and Climates 67
Wait Time
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Safe 87
Drift and Resistance
Liverpool and Ossos 109
Death-Drive, Life-Drive
A Talking Picture, Taste of Cherry,
Five Dedicated to Ozu and Still Life 127
Rebellion’s Limits
The Turin Horse, Werckmeister Harmonies
and 12:08 East of Bucharest 151
Notes 171
Index 193
v
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In memory of Howard
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I n t r o d u c t i o n
“We want a cinema that puts the brakes on, slows things down. What we have to start
doing if we want to study film history and the aesthetics of film history is to look at how
different filmmakers are taking this other path.”
– David Bordwell, at a symposium in 2007 devoted to Béla Tarr’s cinema1
“it is in stillness that one may be said to find true speed”
– Trinh T. Minh-ha, quoted in Karen Beckman and Jean Ma (eds), Still Moving2
Let me begin by citing one more comment relevant to this book’s intent: “Slow
Movies That Are Still Compelling”, an All Movie Talk podcast in December
2006, noted that “many times the word ‘slow’ is used as a synonym for dull or
boring, and certainly that is often an apt description, but we want to make a case
for movies that work without speeding from one plot point to another”. While
the podcast’s goals comported with the views of Bordwell and Trinh, its classifica-
tion of two disparate films, Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) and Raging Bull
(Martin Scorsese, 1980), as slow movies suggested that what is “slow”, perhaps
like what “works”, is debatable. As I explore acclaimed slow movies made since
1984, the year of Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, my aim is to examine
elements besides plot that make certain movies both slow and compelling – so
compelling, in fact, as to warrant greater notice by the general public as well as
1
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SLOW MOVIES
by those who closely study film history and aesthetics. The approaches in recent
slow movies to plot, character and emotion – and to stillness, motion, time and
space – underscore aspects of contemporary existence rarely foregrounded in
either popular or art films. These slow movies augment cinema’s historic achieve-
ment in mirroring a wide range of humanity.
Movies of the last three decades that I am calling slow represent a style or
disposition embraced by cinephiles around the world. Created by some of the
finest film artists working today – in Argentina, China, Hungary, Iran, Portugal,
Romania, Russia, Turkey and the United States – these movies have been hailed
at Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sao Paulo, Toronto, New York and other international
film festivals as well as in the pages of leading film journals. Yet in the US and else-
where, several of these movies and their directors remain largely unknown to the
general public and even to many film students. While studies exist of individual
directors of slow movies, some of whom, like Gus Van Sant, make “faster” films
as well, no book has undertaken a critical examination of significant slow mov-
ies and their directors as a group. This study draws together several such movies
and investigates their major artistic and philosophical interests. It explores what
makes their form and content compelling as well as how they relate to slow films
by earlier directors, including Ozu, Robert Bresson, Michelangelo Antonioni and
Carl Theodor Dreyer, to which they are often compared. The study also touches
on intersections of slow movies and writings by Gilles Deleuze, André Bazin,
Bresson, Laura Mulvey and other analysts of film and culture.
The following directors and slow movies comprise the book’s focus:
Jim Jarmusch (US): Stranger Than Paradise (1984) and Dead Man (1995)
Gus Van Sant (US): Elephant (2003)
Todd Haynes (US): Safe (1995)
Alexander Sokurov (Russia): The Second Circle (1990) and Mother and Son
(1997)
Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey): Distant (2002) and Climates (2006)
Cristi Puiu (Romania): The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005)
Cristian Mungiu (Romania): 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)
Corneliu Porumboiu (Romania): 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006)
Lisandro Alonso (Argentina): Liverpool (2008)
Pedro Costa (Portugal): Ossos (Bones) (1997)
Manoel de Oliveira (Portugal): A Talking Picture (2003)
Abbas Kiarostami (Iran): Taste of Cherry (1997) and Five Dedicated to Ozu
(2003)
Jia Zhang-ke (China): Still Life (2006)
Béla Tarr (Hungary): Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) and The Turin Horse
(2011)
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INTRODUCTION
To varying degrees, these movies are slow by virtue of their visual style, narra-
tive structure and thematic content and the demeanour of their characters. With
respect to visual style, the camera often remains unusually still in these films, and
when it moves, as it does persistently in Béla Tarr’s work, it generally moves quite
slowly. Curtailed as well is physical motion in front of the camera. Furthermore,
editing or cutting in slow movies tends to be infrequent, which inhibits spatio-
temporal leaps and disruptions. Not only do long takes predominate, but long
shots frequently prevail over close-ups. Consistent with these stylistic elements,
which may distance and irritate the viewer, is the austere mise-en-scène: slow
movies shun elaborate and dynamic decor, lighting and colour. Moreover, the
main characters in these movies usually lack emotional, or at least expressive,
range and mobility. Indeed, the characters’ “flat”, affect-less manner (a notion
I draw from Fredric Jameson’s analysis of postmodernism, even though slow
movies often seem adamantly pre-modern) possibly sets these films apart from
precursors such as Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960) and Eclipse (1962), both of
which feature the highly emotive Monica Vitti, and Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1980).3
Further, a bit like slow-movie characters, the plot and dialogue in slow movies
often gravitate towards stillness and death, and tend, in any case, to be minimal,
indeterminate and unresolved. Complaints that “nothing is happening”, prompt-
ed earlier in history by films directed by Antonioni, Andy Warhol and Chantal
Akerman, paintings by Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, and plays by Anton
Chekhov and Samuel Beckett, arise anew regarding several of the slow movies
explored in this book.
The cinematic traits sketched in the last paragraph bear on filmmaker and
scholar Paul Schrader’s study Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer
(1972), as when Schrader writes of a sense of privation and desolation conveyed
in films by his three canonical directors partly as a result of constraints they im-
pose on emotion, physical action, camera movement, cutting and mise-en-scène.
In addition, however, Schrader often discerns in his transcendental films success-
ful quests for spiritual grace, holiness and redemption such as rarely occur in
contemporary slow movies, which tilt in a more secular and bleak direction. One
would also hesitate to argue that in most contemporary slow movies worldly
wisdom, if not spiritual grace, illumines the emptiness and desolation.
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“In all film there’s the desire to capture the motion of life, to refuse immobil-
ity”, says French filmmaker Agnès Varda,4 and other filmmakers including Dziga
Vertov have held similar views. Yet retarded motion and prolonged moments
of stillness and emptiness distinguish contemporary slow movies. Such movies
take place off the beaten track. Even when their locales are not entirely removed
from urban commercial life, these movies depict an emotional and geographic
3
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