Comments on: Cinematism, Realism, and Spectacle part 5: A Joyride to Nowhere?

By: Jasper Sharp

Jasper Sharp — Sun, 30 May 2010 11:26:23 +0000

Glad you’re enjoying these articles Ivan. I’ve no plans at the moment to get them published in print. I’m just brainstorming at the moment, following various ideas and seeing where they’ll lead me, so perhaps this might end up printed somewhere in some form some day.
Glad to hear you caught up with Peter Watkins – I don’t think he’s that well known anywhere. Certainly no one in Japan has heard of him. And I’ve not seen Noe’s latest yet, but am really looking forward to. It still doesn’t seem to have distribution in the UK, but as you say, films such as this do go to show that cinema hasn’t run out of ideas quite yet, and there are still plenty of groundbreaking films being made.

Thanks for your feedback too Ramin. Alice is one of the 3D films I haven’t seen, but your observations are really interesting. I’m not sure how the depth cues are added to the 2d image to give the illusion of the z-axis in these films. I guess I need to do more reading up on how the actual technology of 3D works, but now you mention it, it does seem that these films might work by arranging their objects in discrete 2d planes, rather than by conveying a genuine 3d volume – like flat paper cut-out puppets on a 3-dimensional stage. And the director/camera has the power over how you look at certain shots, because he can pull them in and out of focus, which is effectively the same as an edit. Yes, these sort of observations do make you realise how little we really understand the aesthetics possibilities inherent in 3d.

By: Ramin

Ramin — Sat, 29 May 2010 21:38:45 +0000

I don’t know if I’m qualified to make a point here, because I only watched one movie in 3D, Alice and as you said it was not originally conceived as a 3D picture. However I felt this 3D effect looks genuine only we have a movement from the foreground to the depth or other way round. Especially in static shots, people resemble cardboard creature which offsets the illusion of reality intended to convey through 3D images withmore tangible sense of depth. Once I started to think how much this technology might suit Shimizu and his most recognizable technique of travelling shots along a perpendicular line to the scene.

By: Ivan Denisov

Ivan Denisov — Sat, 29 May 2010 11:52:59 +0000

Thank you very much for answering. Must say all of the articles in “Cinematism, realism, and spectacle” make great reading. Will they appear someday in a printed form?
Back to “slow cinema”. Frankly, I like action films and agree with Manny Farber, who rated them much higher than “arty” attempts (sure you remember his “Termite art vs. elephant art theory). But today in many ways slow arthouse and slow mainstream weirdly become rather similar. Modern action filmmakers spend too much time on explosions, FX and political correctness (I don’t see any rivals to old action masters like Fuller, Hawks, Peckinpah, Leone or Fukasaku) and churn bland, boring stuff. Arthouse directors follow the usual liberal, self-indulgent ways without Wakamatsu’s or Watkins’ energy (by the way, thank you very much for telling me about Peter Watkins – he is almost unknown in Russia, which is a shame). Sometimes I even get the feeling, that liberal cause suffers more from boring films than from right-wingers’ attacks. So, both kinds of slow cinema make for boring viewings.
On the other hand I’m not pessimistic. Noe’s “Enter the void” is an example (for me, at least) of how to use visual effects for something quite interesting and, yes, former experimental poet and talented female filmmaker showed how to make exciting action sequences an important part of really impressive works of cinematic art. I’m talking of course about Sono’s masterpiece “Love exposure” and Bigelow’s excellent “The hurt locker”.

By: Jasper

Jasper — Fri, 28 May 2010 17:35:31 +0000

Hi Ivan, good to hear your feedback once again. The “slow cinema” to which Sight and Sound refers to is the “varied strain of austere minimalist cinema that has thrived internationally over the past ten years…a certain rarefied intensity in the artistic gaze . . . a cinema that downplays event in favour of mood, evocativeness and an intensified sense of temporality.” A typical example seems to have been provided by this year’s Palme d’Or winner by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Avatar and Versus may be boring, in terms that nothing really happens narrative-wise, but they are certainly very fast and busy in the visual stakes, so they don’t encourage the viewer to look for themselves, they are guiding you between each detail. I think it’s a question of each to their own as to which people prefer. I personally don’t find action movies very interesting, but I can also understand the criticism of self-consciously arty films such as those by Naomi Kawase that “nothing happens”.
I am talking about the manner of presentation of the films, rather than what is being presented but still, I see what you mean.

By: Ivan Denisov

Ivan Denisov — Fri, 28 May 2010 13:12:06 +0000

Actually, I’d name “Avatar” as an example of commercial “slow cinema”. I mean, for the most part of the film nothing much happens, actionwise, viewer is just supposed to admire FX and 3D, but that is all.
The same applies to many disaster movies or fantasy films, by the way. And not only from Hollywood. Hiroki’s “Vibrator” is much more interesting to watch, than Kitamura’s “Versus”, for example.

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