I watched a a youtube video in which a young woman “geek” watches Blade Runner for the first time and tells us her reaction and review. She seems underwhelmed. Tongue-in-cheek, she riffs on the inaccuracies in brands and tech in a movie set in 2019, and then calls it extremely slow.
Slow? I wouldn’t speed up Blade Runner one bit. It’s intended to be mesmerizing and strange, with a series of images of a dystopian future passing before us at a pace like a gumshoe film noir. The speed and timing of the film is a part of its genius.
Then I thought about other similarly-paced movies which I love, and a lot of them are either Kubrick or Kurosawa movies. I love this type of movie, as I’m all about brilliant visuals. Movies which contain frenetic editing and continual action are exhausting and boring to me.
No one could call 47 Ronin fast, but that’s a favorite of mine. Also, Alien takes its time before much action takes place, and even then, never reaches the over-caffeinated pace of a modern movie.
Seems more like a vapid webblogger than a true “geek”.
There are plenty of great slow-paced movies that don’t have MTV style rapid editing and CGI spectacle (although often lots of subtle CGI).
QuickSilver already mentioned Moon. But also:
Ex Machina
Gattaca
2001
Donnie Darko
Children of Men
Sunshine
Brazil
The Thing
Her
12 Monkeys
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Jaws. Woman gets eaten at the beginning, then basically nothing happens for an hour, then Chief Brody, Quint, and Richard Dreyfuss go out on the boat, where mostly nothing happens for another hour, then there’s a flurry of activity before Quint gets eaten and Brody blows up the shark with a fire extinguisher. The end.
If a movie is slow in the sense that nothing useful is happening for more than 15 minutes, then there are no good slow movies.
But if it’s slow in that it’s successfully developing characters or building tension or advancing a story, then Jaws is excellent, The Thing, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Titanic, Alien…
My second all-time favourite film, “Being There”, unfolds like molasses in January, but is necessary for character and plot in this one, as it slowly, but surely, builds into a wonderfully skewed juggernaut of accidental power-climbing. Even Chauncey Gardiner’s delivery is slow.
“The Last Picture Show” and “The Tenant” are also fine examples.
To be fair, the pace of movies has increased over the years. I find myself amazed sometimes when I watch an old TV show how slowly some were paced. long establishing shots. Driving. Turning. (I think part of that was padding to fill out the hour, but it did happen in movies as well.)
Modern video story telling moves along a lot quicker. Sometimes it’s better, sometimes not. It isn’t just “MTV editing” with scenes no longer than 3 seconds - the general story moves faster, too. Modern audiences are more familiar with conventions, so a lot of expository scenes are no longer necessary.
I wish I could think of a good example. Use theme songs for an example. Gilligan’s Island spells out the entire premise of the show. I think it runs a full minute. 2.5 Men’s theme consists of “Mennnnnn”. Themes are no longer necessary.
Last year, I saw Jaws for the first time. I found everything before the guys go out on the boat to be boring. However, I thought everything on the boat to the end was great.
Yes, but very exciting. I was on the edge of my seat wondering if that concrete pour would go off as planned. It’s not often that a construction supervisor is the hero of the story.
And Hitchcock movies are brilliant. Psycho is really slow, but it’s considered one of the best films ever. The murders that are shown on-screen actually take the time it would take to die, and are excruciating-- like the murder in Strangers on a Train, one of the best on-screen deaths ever. Hitchcock himself says that he made mistakes in pacing in his early films-- he talks for length about one in Sabotage, for example, but I think that scene actually works better than comparable scenes in modern movies. I get so tired of people doing FX things just because they can-- I mean, the pacing of the original Star Wars (now, A New Hope) is actually kinda slow for a sci-fi film, and the really expensive FX are doled out more mercenarily than people remember, but it’s one of the greatest movies ever made.
Maybe this explains why I haven’t enjoyed new movies so much since about 2000. People think CGI can make up for anything, but it can’t. One of my favorite movies has no effects in it whatsoever. It doesn’t even have any camera motion. It’s called Stranger than Paradise. It was made in 1984, when lots of independent films were getting play, before Hollywood discovered them, and started making faux independent film.
It didn’t rivet you to your seat when the girl died at the beginning? That’s one of the most effective, and scariest, scenes in all film. And it kept me watching. Also, Roy Scheider’s performance. He was perfect. Watching his Chief Brody struggle with, and make, every decision was very suspenseful, and great acting. And I was only 10 when I saw Jaws, but I was aware of those things on some level, so a 20-something weblogger can be as well.
Now, there are fast-paced films from the earlier days of film-- the fast-talking screwball comedy where things just don’t stop happening was a genre. They never let up, and you can’t catch your breath. And there are even some pretty fast-paced silent films (and no, I don’t mean the ones run at the wrong speed). But it was a directorial decision, not a marketing decision.
A recent movie that made a lot of “Best Of 2015 Horror Movie” lists: Bone Tomahawk. A western with Kurt Russell, it takes its time getting there, but none of that time is wasted. Tell your young friend that there’s a difference between “slow” and “deliberate”.
Slow and probably boring to anyone who isn’t of a technical mind.
It’s a Sci-Fi movie with a very realistic approach as to what a manned mission to Europa might look like.
Personally, it’s one of my favorites.
Compare the original Mad Max vs Mad Max: Fury Road. Or The Terminator vs Terminator: Genisys.
Technology enables filmmakers to cram more and better effects at a much faster pace then they could 30 years ago. And audiences expect that. Sometimes it works. Sometimes no. The downside is that it makes it harder to create high-tension “slow burners” and market them like big blockbusters.