Yearning For Stillness

Yearning For Stillness

By Lucas Gascon

Explosions, intense fight scenes, and rapid-fire dialogue. These three things represent the aims of cinema: exploring the unrealistic and fantastic. However, they’ve become so commonplace that modern moviegoers are desensitized to their effects. As the pace of everyday life increases, mainstream cinema has adapted accordingly, satisfying shorter attention spans with quick, efficient resolutions. In underground and independent cinema, however, the opposite has occurred: filmmakers have eschewed constant narrative stimulation in favor of more tempered pacing. By focusing on introspection and an appreciation for the subtle beauty in seemingly mundane, insignificant moments in our lives, these filmmakers have created an escape from the frantic chaos of modern life. Although it has enjoyed a resurgence in the last few decades, the concept of ‘slow cinema’ has a history nearly as old as the medium itself.

Slow cinema is not necessarily a rigid genre label; rather, it’s an umbrella term encompassing a mode of cinema which emphasizes observation over narrative, typically through long shots, minimal editing, and a tangible sense of duration or passage of time. Early proprietors of the genre include Yasujiro Ozu (though his films are mostly still distinctly narrative-driven) and Andrei Tarkovsky (who focused on expressing the passage of time on film). Tarkovsky’s films are characterized by contemplative, slow-moving shots, which make for a style that can feel alienating even to patient viewers. Consider his 3-hour long sci-fi masterpiece Stalker (1979), a film containing 142 shots in 163 minutes, with an average shot length over a minute and many lasting for over four minutes. Further, many pioneers of slow cinema interrogated the relationship between narrative and time. Take Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) for example; though it mirrors Stalker’s runtime and average shot length, it is notably detached from a traditional narrative structure. The camera intently studies a housewife’s inner life as she completes work around her apartment for nearly the entire film, subordinating her outer life as a prostitute trying to provide for herself and her son to the margins of the narrative. Bela Tarr’s notorious Sátántangó (1994) runs over seven hours long, yet the majority of this gargantuan runtime is devoted to building tone rather than establishing a clear narrative. Though the film is an adaptation of László Krasznahorkai’s novel of the same name, Tarr creates an intense, expressionistic encapsulation of the post-communist Hungarian countryside. Films like these can seem unapproachable and esoteric, but slow cinema creators are revered for their manipulation of temporality and ability to reframe the ordinary and mundane as mesmerizing and hypnotic. The viewer must interpret the images they’re presented with; these filmmakers often refuse to openly divulge purpose or clarify the narrative. Whereas blockbusters grab the viewer’s attention with fantastical images and quick cuts, slow cinema generates interest by immersing its viewers in quiet, contemplative spaces.

In recent decades, it’s become that stillness is becoming more and more of a commodity in today’s world. The quiet spaces explored in modern slow films have become more intangible and removed from reality in a world where constant action and noise is the norm. In this sense, one can see how mainstream cinema and slow cinema are not two entirely separate spheres. Consider Tsai Ming-Liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003), a film nearly devoid of dialogue which explores a barren movie theater during a screening of King Hu’s wuxia classic Dragon Inn (1967). The reflexive meta-narrative of watching a film about the act of watching a film is deepened by the aestheticization of the movie theater as a place of stillness and introspection; the film evokes a certain yearning for such a peaceful solitude. Other films in the genre utilize temporal manipulation to create a transcendental, almost surreal atmosphere, as seen in the second half of renowned slow cinema virtuoso Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady (2004). The fragile romance of the film’s first half is transformed into a surreal, phantasmagoric cat-and-mouse game between a lost soldier and an otherworldly spirit in the second half, all within the same all-encompassing rainforest. Herein we see the genre’s characteristic elements serving to emphasize a space detached from reality, rather than grounded in it – though more subtle and careful, this is a concept not unlike how the filmic elements of mainstream action, sci-fi, or even romance films work to achieve the same effect. Weerasethakul himself even cleverly rebukes the idea that slow cinema is sleep inducing– the director has stated that he encourages viewers of his films to sleep, as he endeavors to have his films affect audiences the way sleeping and dreaming do.

When discussing how mainstream and slow cinema influence each other, it’s important to note that filmmakers have long used slow cinema tools for films of nearly all genres, which is more evident in modern cinema than ever before: from Kogonada’s gentle, contemplative Columbus (2017) to Paul Schrader’s violent, brooding First Reformed (2017), longer observational shots and cameras which meander and stray from traditional narrative have made their way into the work of higher profile filmmakers. The elements of slow cinema have branched off in countless directions, but its essential philosophy hasn’t gone anywhere (even if its novelty has, as Paul Schrader asserts). Films like Hu Bo’s An Elephant Sitting Still (2018), an expansive, bleak exploration of industrial decay in China, or Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car (2021), a serene meditation on grief and regret, harken back to the work of Ozu, Tarkovsky, and Tarr. It’s clear that slow cinema occupies a space in the milieu of modern cinema as neither a rigid genre label nor an outdated style, but rather a transient philosophy falling somewhere in between.