Application Of Slowness In Cinema
Certainly, life does not go in perpetual slowness; sometimes life accelerates, slows down, surprises and is interrupted. But in cinema, slowness is not a circumstance; it is an instrument that the filmmaker has at their disposal to create a film where the mood trumps the events. The definitions of slow, contemplative cinema are based on many factors that, in many ways, complete each other. For instance, in her book review of Slow Movies: Countering the Cinema of Action by Ira Jaffe (2014), Gottlieb quotes Jaffe’s definition of slow movies as films that mostly have “a fixed camera, largely taciturn isolated characters, a low emotional temperature, a vague or enigmatic narrative and an emphasis on alienation and morality”.
For Lutz Koepnick in On Slowness: Toward an Aesthetic of the Contemporary (2016), De Luca writes: slowness should not be reduced to an aesthetic element that is a mere slowing of speed, but it should be defined as a “visualization of the complexity of the now in all its ‘presentences’, and an ‘ever-changing meeting ground of multiple duration and potentialities, of competing tempos and temporalities, of dissimilar narratives and vision’,” or in the words of De Luca, slowness is a pace that allows confrontations in the coexistence of multiple temporalities that define what we call the present time. Other essays that addressed the subject of slow cinema also talk about it in the context of late capitalism, where a slow-paced rhythm is used as a metaphor for a resistance to speed. In his article titled The Slow Drift (2013) that mentions Song Hwee Lim’s Tsai Ming-Liang and a Cinema of Slowness, Yün Peng lists Lim’s filmmaking strategies for ‘staging’ slowness and their influence on the viewer’s experience. For example, Lim considers that long takes are not equal to slowness, it takes other factors to create a slow pace, like the directing of actors, camera movements (Cf. Ira Jaffe), the absence of dialogue, the emphasis of sound effect, and uncomfortable sounds and silence.
Lim also defines slowness as a value judgment about what “constitutes ‘something’ – subjects worthy of cinema as well as our attention - rather than ‘nothing’ (as in ‘nothing happens’). ” All these three definitions list, more or less, the typical characteristics of slow cinema. Though, the last definition corresponds to what we will examine in this paper, which will aim to present the effects of slow cinema on the viewers, but in relation to different film genres such as drama, romantic, sci-fi, horror and animation. Because slow cinema is not associated to any particular genre of films, it is interesting to observe how a slow-paced rhythm can be adapted to any genre in order to give a film a certain meaning and make it refreshing. Slowness is fairly common in the drama genres. It is a widespread genre that is serious, realistic, and in which characters face serious problems or live ‘passionate’ conflicts with others or themselves (or both). It arouses in the viewer feelings tending towards sadness, terror or pity by playing on their sensitivity. If slowness is added to the cinematography of a drama it can enhance the conditions of the characters, which can be social or psychological. A slow pacing of a story favors the search for certain formal quality. When things go fast, we focus on the action and its efficiency, but when the pace is slow, we focus more on the conditions and the way things are told: we become more sensitive.
For instance, in Chantal Akerman’s film titled Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975), the viewer becomes aware of Jeanne’s living conditions as they observe how her daily life looks like. It is organized as a mechanical dance of domestic gestures. Jeanne cooks, sets the table, serves her son, dines, clears the table, does the dishes, and arranges the kitchen. She undoes her bed, falls asleep, remakes her bed, bathes methodically in her bathtub, dresses, and waxes her son’s shoes. Like its title, the film is long, but it was necessary to film all her actions in ‘real time’ to document, and in a way, confirm something important, which is the social construction of a housewife that does not tolerate change to her routine which, if one disturbs, leads to disaster. She is also a prostitute; while her dinner is cooking, she receives man at home, at task she performs with the same robotic care as her household activities.
The film shocks by its way of making the actions last far beyond their simple narrative function (Loader, 1977). When Jeanne waits on a chair for her son to come back from school, the shot lasts well beyond the time needed to understand the information, but like stated above, it is necessary because through these scenes Jeanne’s life takes shape. These scenes can also be uncomfortable to watch. Peng (above-cited) quotes Lim describing this feeling accurately: “we are made acutely aware that we are watching a film, whose long take image is starting back at us even as we gaze upon it; a film that elicits a corporal response from us as we wiggle in our seats in a state of discomfort, wondering what the people around us are feeling, both emotionally and physically”(Peng, 2013, p. 134 in the book). The viewer knows that her life is somewhat miserable, but recognizes that she inherently consents to this type of lifestyle.
Slow cinema can also be revealed in a fictional work. Science fiction as genre invents a futuristic universe, whose extraordinary elements nevertheless remain plausible since they rely on a possible scientific, biological or political evolution. Although science fiction is centered on the imaginary, it presents coherence and often proposes a philosophical or utopian vision of the future. In this case, slowness can promote immersion and reflection. It is by definition a distancing of the action, so when the story slows down, we can take the time to reflect on what we have seen and what we are seeing. It is an interesting moment where the past and the present of the story merge to allow us to put things in perspective and imagine possible outcomes. A good example would be Stalker (1979) by Andreï Tarkovsky. The plot is set in a more or less near future when a disaster of unknown origin gave birth to the Zone; the Zone is a territory surrounded by military troops prohibiting anyone from entering it. It is said, however, that the Zone contains a chamber in its center, a place where the one who pronounces a wish sees the latter granted. Going there presents a mortal danger and the “stalker”, who is a sort of smuggler, was charged to escort a physicist and a writer to the chamber.
At the end of this quest, the stalker lost his faith in humanity and the possibility of giving them happiness. This film addresses the notions of faith, philosophy and spirituality, which are primarily revealed through the dialogue (the stalker sometimes recites poems like religious texts). In order to be completely immersed in their adventure, the viewer is asked to engage fully in the story. Tarkovsky enables this attentiveness by creating long contemplative shots that are clean of artifice and somber. These long shots are there to understand the reasons and intentions to why these men are seeking the chamber in the Zone (Pridham, 2013). Slowness can also be adopted by the genre of horror. This genre plays on our perception of reality while it focuses on our most primitive fears. Its interest is to create a progressive tension to create the feeling of danger that may rise from the frame at any time, and what better way to produce this atmosphere than a slow-paced rhythm. Slowness is one of the wheels of suspense. Before a scare, nothing beats a drop in the rhythm to better highlight what will follow. Slowness can give a more refreshing aspect to a horror movie than the overused standard jump scares. A film that voluntarily uses this instrument is The Shining (1980) by Stanley Kubrick. It tells the story of a family whose father, Jack, becomes the guardian of the Overlook Hotel that is situated on an isolated mountain, for several months.
Loneliness begins to weigh and the protagonist is then caught in schizophrenia and tries to kill his wife and son. This film is entirely built on suspense that slowly unfolds throughout the entire movie, which is especially noticeable when the camera (a Steadicam to be precise) travels around the corridors of the hotel. In doing so, Kubrick is creating a feeling of unease that can make the viewer wonder what Danny, the son, will find when he turns around the corridor with his little bicycle for example, or when Jack wanders through the hotel looking frustrated or impatient because he cannot stand the isolation of the hotel anymore (or the fact that has nothing to drink). This suspense goes on until it explodes when Jack switches to madness (Carr-Wilson, 2017). A slow pacing can also be found in the genre of animation. This genre’s particularity lies on the techniques used to make a film; the filmmaker takes pictures of an image and then slightly changes its content to take another picture and so on.
In her article titled The Tortoise, the Hare, and the Constitutive Outsider: Refraining Fast and Slow Cinemas (2016), Beckman writes that the literature found on slow cinema mostly focuses on live-action cinema and usually excludes animation. She finds this quite strange because this genre is perceived as one of “the slowest and most labor-intense form of cinematic production, on extreme sport requiring extraordinary powers of duration” (p. 127), which makes animators more conscious about speed and motion than other filmmakers. Slowness is conducive to storytelling. It helps to set a context and an atmosphere.