"Pauline Kael said it was 'meditative', but I fell asleep."

I wasn't completely on the film's wavelength, but Distant did have what I've been calling my favorite single shot of any movie I saw last year: that abandoned ship lying on its side in the harbor, rolling back and forth with the waves as snow clings to its masts.

decent... but not as great as "The Quince Tree Sun" ( which has similar subject matter but without the portentiousness")

i agree with the rest of Tuomas's and would like to see L"humanite again.

This thread also needs some Cassavetes action. "Shadows" and "Faces" are both quite slow.

See Jeanne Dielman anyway you can eventually, but a screening would add much.

L'humanite had some interesting stuff before turning into quite the ridiculous thing, but it was his follow-up (Twentynine Palms) where Bruno Dumont showed himself to be a real fraud.

btw yeah -- kael was someone who never dug 'meditative' film. she liked brian depalma!

I thought this film was hilarious but I'm not sure if I was meant to. No-one else in the cinema did anyway.

I thought La Belle noiseuse had too much plot and activity. I expected it to be much more 'just' painting.

Search: La Mamon et la Putain

Something is now compelling me to say
Search: Marguerite Duras' India Song and The Truck

>kael was someone who never dug 'meditative' film

NEVER is rather absolute. I'm pretty sure Kael liked some Antonioni, and if they qualify as 'meditative,' Renoir, Rossellini, etc.

Subtitles are impossible to read at least half the time. (Luckily, dialogue accounts for probably a collective 15 minutes of the three-hour-plus film.)

This is so great.

Yes. (Have seen, that is.)

If so, would you consider the image quality at least adequate to drop $20 on the thing, or no?

No. It will impugn your memory of that fantastic-sounding viewing experience.

...All right, ONE more thing: has anyone ever seen Last Year at Marienbad? It's reportedly incredibly slow, and weirdly skewed w/r/t character and narrative, but also totally worthwhile.

its worthwhile, but not nearly my favorite of resnais'. hiroshima mon amour is so much better in my opinion.

Ha, Ken, I saw these the last two Tuesdays at the French Institute -- last night with John Waters discussing The Truck with Kent Jones of Film Comment! Hadn't seen any of hers (unless Hiroshima Mon Amour counts) before, and it'll be awhile before I try anymore. India Song really seems to stop time, but when Michel Lonsdale starts his 10-minute offscreen bellowing wail, omigod.
...Jeanne Dielman is paced like Run Lola Run by comparison.

Waters was funny ("They talk about the characters falling asleep! Very brave") and Jones suggested a US remake with Vin Diesel and Kathy Bates. And it was mentioned that Kael gave The Truck one of its few good NY reviews in '77.

Oh, I see.

and also to test my own boredomometer -- which is capricious of course (AND THAT'S HOW I LIKE IT)

ie TS: bein aged and havin less TIME for this kind of thing vs. bein aged and apprecitatin a good long sit down and doze

Actually-although I cleverly refrained from saying so in my first post- I love Le Camion. India Song I found a little tough-going, but, as with the corresponding moments in Fassbinder movies, I laughed along with the cruel godlike filmmaker at Lonsdale's embarrassing outburst.

Kiarostami
Koreeda

destroy: ulysses' gaze (which i couldn't get more than an hour into, though it did have some wonderful shots)

Paul Schrader ponders slow cinema:

Everyone is different, but they all circle around the same techniques and the same concept of time, of duration. What happens when you don’t cut? When you just wait, and the viewer becomes aware that his experience of watching is part of the experience of the film? Your self-awareness of that time, the endurance of that time, becomes part of the experience. Normally films never work like that because they’re trying to convince you of the opposite.

There are still bits of transcendental style. It was a precursor to slow cinema, but it’s not really that slow. A terrific film like Silent Light is closer to transcendental style than slow cinema, but they lump it in with slow cinema now. I just finished directing a film [First Reformed] that I’m trying to do as a quiet film. The film that I last did [Dog Eat Dog] was extremely aggressive and profane. The motto was: Let’s never be boring. Now I’m editing and the mantra is: How can we use boredom to the best effect?

Malick is part of that universe. But you can see Malick running out of gas as his car goes down the road. I don’t think this kind of slow cinema is a cinema with a great future. The more extreme it becomes, the closer it gets to being a dead-end.

https://nowtoronto.com/movies/features/paul-schrader-slow-cinema-is-dying-a-slow-death/