Movie pacing: one person's "boring" is another per

[Shaun das Schaf]

the Station Agent can be described as languid. I love the movie and enjoy the time I spend watching, wishing I could stay just a bit longer...

I was reading through people's favourites in a thread somewhere here and remember seeing this on your list, as well as quite a few others I concurred with. Anyway, I too love this movie. In fact, it's probably time for a revisit.

[deer of the dawn]

A serious tangent, but related to pace [and IMO, can be extended in another direction to speak on volume]:
Paul Virilio...despite some problems in his thought...has a lot of interesting things to say on speed. Here's a very short teaser [or anti-teaser since some might find it immediately not worth their time to go further with it].
www.daaq.net/folio/bibliography/b_virilio.html

Thanks for the link Vraith, looks like an interesting read. Particularly like Peter's comments re: a perpetual state of crisis:

The hazard of this fixation on speed is that has structured the world to function in a constant state of crisis, an unending cold war of environmental and economic exploitation.

The culture that develops out of this permenant state of crisis is a culture that is fixated on security; security and speed: who can protect theselves best and fastest. The result is a war waged in time instead of in distance. The physical world ceases to be the battle field and instead the battle becomes one of ideologies and economics and speed

and from the book itself:

... the more speed increases, the faster freedom decreases.

Ironically, I didn't have time just now to read the article (saving it for later) but I am intrigued. It makes me think of how this generation is searching for significance; crisis, real or fabricated, "feels" significant. Hence the appeal of movies that not just sustain crisis from beginning to end, but layer and complicate them (think of Inception, which almost anyone I've talked to had to see it more than once to understand all that happened; or of Transformers 3, which I don't plan to see, but even reviewers said that so much was going on onscreen it was almost impossible even visually to figure it all out).

Now, I love a convoluted, multilayered plot (An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears is one of my all-time favorite reading experiences) but where does complexity become empty compression?

[Krazy Kat]

Hi DOTD,

I've sometimes tried to define movie pacing. But have never been sure how to tell if the movie was well paced or was it simply because I personally enjoyed it.

Giving this some thought, I suppose the movie makers can use "the vehicle" to help pace it out. The obvious being something in motion, from Easy Rider to Thelma and Louise, Hitchcock's - Strangers on a Train, or even North by Northwest - where the camera doesn't have to move for the motion is aready there in the background.

One other "vehicle" that came to mind was the film Marathon Man. Dustin Hoffman's character doing all the running while most of the other characters only appear to walk. Except of course for the film's opening scenes, where the two old guy's engaged in road rage race towards an explosive conclusion. Unlike the movie as a whole - which really winds down the pace like and old clock...Dustin Hoffman finally facing his demons by not running any more, killing the White Angel

oops...I'm out of time, drat! - gotta go!

I think Marathon Man is a masterclass in pacing.

[deer of the dawn]

Love the old Hitchcock films and that is one area where he excelled. I think The Thirty-Nine Steps is probably my favorite. It makes me think that fast action should not substitute for character development.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

2001: A Space Odyssey definitely falls into the category of films with deliberate pacing, as does Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut. Although the first and the last maintain a prolonged sense of tension. Barry Lyndon is sometimes considered indulgent, but I think it unfolds beautifully, and Kubrick captured the sense that the age almost had the feel of a gigantic painting.

[Krazy Kat]

For me, Barry Lyndon is like the Ridley Scott film, The Duelists. Maybe the slow pace, as with The Duelists, creates an impact to a film no other pace could capture.

The film editor I suppose is a film's unsung hero. His/her task has to be of equal importance, pacing-wise, than any other in the crew!

[Vraith]

I'm currently re-watching the series "Twin Peaks," [wife got me "definitive gold box edition" for xmas]...which is pretty much the definition of "slow pace" for the last 40 years or so, a serious contender anyway. And I just love the thing...just the visuals I'd watch it, even if the characters/story never happened.