Within the medium of cinema – where much of its modern work has become so commercialized and bombarded with stimuli, always having to be quicker, louder, and bigger – true filmmaking boldness is now to be found in silence and stillness.
Every so often, we hear criticism of a film for being “too slow” or “too boring.” While some films can certainly overstay their welcome or not prove worth their runtime, these descriptors have begun to be treated as inherent sins that films should avoid committing. Due to our new digital era, where everything is at our fingertips and therefore competing for our attention, we have blurred the lines between art and content to a dangerous point.
Before social media and streaming, we treated film as an experience. We would go to a theater and devote our attention to the screen for however long it wanted us to. Now, we can give up on a film five minutes in if it’s not stimulating enough just to see what else is on Netflix, or we can check our phone during the boring parts of the movie. Although the accessible nature of streaming platforms does have its benefits, they have also taken away the experience and connection that art and film can bring us. And a world without art and connection can become lonely.
All of these realizations came to me the first time I watched Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003), directed by Tsai Ming-liang. The 82-minute film encapsulates these ideas — the correlations between a dying art form in a modern era and the loneliness and longing for connection within that world — without the film ever needing something to happen. This is why slow cinema is more important now than ever.
Slow cinema, to give it a proper definition, is an artistic genre of cinema that, rather than just being a “slow film,” withholds narrative or plot as a story-telling device. Slow cinema films typically do not have an immediate conflict that is meant to hold the audience’s attention. There is no trying to solve a murder case, and there are no will-they-won’t-they tensions between the protagonist and love interest. Slow cinema restrains from having any sort of plot whatsoever.
The initial reaction one may naturally have to this is: why on earth should I watch that?
The best way to start is by differentiating a story from a plot. While slow cinema lacks a plot — the sequences of events that make up a story — it does not subtract from the existence of a story to tell. While plot has always been a heavily utilized tool when it comes to storytelling, it is still just that: a tool for storytelling rather than an integral and necessary component of art.
Goodbye, Dragon Inn, for example, follows the final night of the Dragon Inn theater before it closes for good. If this film were to adopt a plot, it might follow a man who moves into town after the death of his wife who, upon seeing this theater that would be closing down soon, feels that it is his duty to both the dying art and his dead wife to save this place no matter the odds. (Was this example loosely inspired by the plot of We Bought a Zoo (2011)? Yes. Do I digress? Yes.) While this story could still tackle similar themes regarding being faced with a dying art form and searching for connection through it, the exclusion of a plot invokes an entirely different set of emotions and attitudes.
Instead, Goodbye, Dragon Inn watches on the final day with no hope of saving.
Through the experience of watching the theater’s mundanity and emptiness, we understand all of the backstory of its decay and why it’s closing. The framing of the story and lack of plot express the dread and hopelessness of this place. And through the silence and disconnect, we understand how lost the people within this space feel and how bleak a world that no longer appreciates art can be. Despite there being no plot and hardly any dialogue, we completely experience the story of this place and the emotions surrounding it.
Because of its active choice to reject using a plot to tell a story, Slow cinema must utilize its medium’s most essential and intrinsic aspects to tell the story. They must tell the story through the camera and the editing. By breaking cinema down to its most basic elements like this, we see a whole new world where film can function like poetry or music.
Cinema has always been adept at capturing the feeling of experience. It is a medium that captures a moment in time and bottles it up for us to feel. A great film can make you feel emotions that cannot be put into words and can only be understood in that moment; one shot alone can make you feel nostalgic about a memory you never made. Slow cinema is all about breaking film down to its most humble pieces so that a viewer can live in a moment, capturing an experience in its most unfiltered totality. In a way, slow cinema could be considered the purest form of the cinematic medium.
And some may say, “Good for anyone who can enjoy that, but that just sounds tedious to sit through a movie like that.” Well, yes. It is doubtful that even the most appreciative fans of slow cinema get an actual rush while watching it. But to that effect, one should consider that art should extend past how it makes you feel during the consumption of it.
We have all gone through a post-concert depression before, I’m sure. After receiving such stimuli from an experience all at once, it can be a hard-hitting sobriety after such a high that almost makes life feel empty. This happens with every experiential art form to an extent, especially movies. Sometimes, people who watch action movies feel like their life is bland in retrospect. After all, thrill rides are typically followed by a feeling of dullness. Cinema and media can subconsciously impact our expectations and understandings of life, and these post-thrill depressions can add up. With this in mind, slow cinema can be a sort of palette cleanser.
So many films are trying to do so much all the time, making our real world feel dull. In contrast, watching a film that makes you slow down and experience something in its stark, quiet reality can serve as a meditative process that enhances life rather than dulls it. In the same way that low noises sound louder in a quiet room, sitting with something and slowing down can enrich the rest of our lives and reset our stimuli in ways that we may need within our modern world. This is also why slow cinema is now more important than ever. With so many things competing for our interests, it is important to stop, breathe, think, and feel. While slow cinema may not be the most stimulating thing you will ever watch, it is a fulfilling experience that taps into a unique approach to the medium, and it can be a breath of fresh air that we so often need in cinema’s industrialized and fast-paced landscape.
Slow cinema may not be everyone’s cup of tea, and no one should feel obligated to enjoy it, but it is an experience I believe everyone should give a chance. See for yourself if it speaks to you. If you are not sure where to start, here is a list of seven slow and meditative films that I would personally recommend:
Article Courtesy of Eugene Rocco-Utley
From ‘Goodbye, Dragon Inn;’ Image Credit to Metrograh Pictures via The New York Times
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