I’m currently watching The Tree of Wooden Clogs, and I’m not getting anything out of it. Not to say it’s a bad movie because I don’t find myself on the verge of enlightenment after each scene, but it’s life, and hopefully I find that I’m not the knower of all things and that there was something to take out of this film, because I know there is. I like long ass movies that don’t adhere to several of the cliche characteristics that come with long films. Celebrations like weddings, holidays, etc are prevelant throughout almost every single long movie I’ve ever seen, and it’s tiring to stand there watching people dance and dance and dance and think anything else except WOW, this is long.
Of course, the indulgent factor is a given when the story isn’t strictly the reason why a film goes on for almost three hours. However, I detested American Gangster which was, if I remember correctly, almost completely story, and not much else. Those are the kidns of epics I dislike. Indulgence is fascinating to me, and especially the fact that an epic has the poetic lisence to diverge from plot without getting alot of flak for it.
Length isn’t so important for me as is pacing. David Lean and Sergio Leone have done very long movies and i Have no problems with them, but Tarr and Tarkovsky films always leave me wishing they had been a bit shorter.
I like long, but not if it gets boring or tedious. Fanny & Alexander is long (talking about the theatrical release – someday I will see the TV version). No Tarkovsky movie is too long for me, because I live every second of his films. I saw some of Andy Warhol’s films some time ago (nobody talks about them, anymore), and they were way too long. So, it all depends on the director and movie. I have yet to see Tarr’s Satantango, but its length will not be a problem. The directors/auteurs who take their time with a shot, scene, or film, intrigue me the same way a Mahler symphony does – which perople who don’t like him, find too long. All a matter of taste. All three extended versions of Lord of the Rings anyone? Sometimes, like lovemaking, slow and long is better, right?
You are fortunate to see Satantango, it is not in circulation where I reside and this movie has been touted as a masterpiece.
Satantango is fantastic, and its DVD release is a perfect way to watch it. I’m not sure I understand the value of having to sit through a 7.5 hour movie in one sitting. Why is that necessary? I say get the DVDs, watch it an hour at a time, as if reading a book, and put it down when you need a break. I think you’ll be surprised, though, especially since it’s divided into chapters. As I was watching it, a couple chapters would go by and I would think, “I’ll just watch one more.” It gets addictive.
Satantango works well since it’s such a long film, it seems to examine time itself so the long scenes like of the doctor at his desk in the final hour or so of the film I found fascinating.
Yes, Satantango is a brilliant work of art, and on the contrary, I believe it must be seen in one sitting. It’s doing an injustice to the film to cut off the rhythms it is deliberately creating.
I believe that no film is inherently “too long”; rather, it depends on how the film is told and if the film feels too long, whatever storytelling method being utilized is just not working. A short film could be too long and a six hour film could not be long enough.
Steve Oerkfitz…your point interested me. I feel your sentiment is apt, but I believe that the long takes of Tarr and Tarkovsky’s films justify their long running times. The slower the pacing, the slower the film. Films with quicker cutting seem to work better shorter.
Would you also say that the two intermissions usually included when Satantango screens theatrically also “cut off the rhythms it is deliberately creating”?
Additionally, if Satantango must be watched in one sitting, why are there chapters? The film deliberately cuts off its OWN rhythms. Isn’t the point of a chapter (in a film, a book, or a break between acts of a play) to pause the action? If Bela Tarr is inserting his own pause, why can’t I hit stop on the DVD player? I absolutely love the movie and have watched it multiple times, but to insist upon sitting through it from start to finish seems—I don’t know—puritanical. You can sense Tarr’s rhythms, just as you can sense the rhythms of a book or an opera, even if you take an intermission or two. Or four.
Good point Mark, there are in fact chapters. However, I assume Tarr would love to have his film seen in one sitting. Personally, it was extremely fascinating to be stuck in his world for seven hours, and if the film was longer, I gladly would have continued watching. To each his own I guess.
Carson-It’s one thing sitting at home for 7 hours watching a film but having to sit in a theater seat for 7 hours borders on masochism to me.
Good point, Steve.
Yeah, great point. A couch always beats a chair. It’s a tough call: less comfort with larger screen or more comfort with smaller screen.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. I just recently watched Zhang-ke’s Platform, and Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse. I’m going to see 1900 tomorrow, and I find that when a director makes a longer film I have the opportunity to really enter the films world. When watching La Belle… I was completely immersed in the long static takes of Piccoli drawing, and painting. He completely brings you into the mentality of both the artist, and the model/muse. The plot elements almost feel secondary (which may be a fault in the film, I’ll have to re-watch it to find out), but I couldn’t get over how fast the film seemed to move, and how surprised I was when it ended (both discs). It’s so much easier to be pulled into a long film, and I actually wanted La Belle Noiseuse to be longer, the same with Satantango, and Scenes from a Marriage.
1900 is quite exciting, so many things happen in it that its running time seems much shorter than it really is. Really defiantly long films use their form and aesthetic to increase the sense of length. Peter Greenaway’s several-hour The Falls is a good example: it’s an encyclopedia of everyone in England whose last name is Fall. Each character has his own entry. Some of the stories are very short, others go on and on and on. And you keep waiting for that next intertitle that tells you you’re on to the next Fall. It can be intensely aggravating at times.
@Justin -
I saw The Falls in a theater about 12 years ago, and I remember the experience to be just as you described.
By contrast, I really, really wish the original, three-hour-long cut of The Draughtman’s Contract were exhibited and made available on DVD.
A question I’d like to pose:
How does a 7-hour feature like Satantango contrast with a serialized television production of approximately the same length…say, the first season of Twin Peaks? Or the longer Out 1? No need to confine yourselves to those specific examples; they aren’t particularly comparable anyway.
Perhaps there is a difference in the way we are ‘meant’ to allot time to watch them (though I personally see nothing wrong with taking breaks in Satantango) but I don’t believe that there is an inherent difference in the way a feature uses time against the way a serialized production uses time.
Satantango is formed in chapters. I would’ve watched the film in installments even if it hadn’t been; but this structure facilitated viewing it serially.
Brian – I think the difference is intent. Satantango is only formed in chapters because a tango is based on 12 steps, so the film is set in 12 chapters. Bela Tarr wants the film to be viewed is as complete a manner as possible, though. Something like Fanny & Alexander, or Scenes from a Marriage, or either of your examples are meant to be viewed over a longer period. The director’s intent changes the sense of time in the films.
I like long takes generally and proper space and time for observation and contemplation, but quality and effect is more important than length and long takes for their own sake, which can come to feel like a self-serving mannerism
I think a lot of physically long films depend on the theater situation, as a spectator. If you watch them at home, (or play them for yourself in a theater – something which personally I can do if I want, because I have access to two film theaters) this gets a bit lost. You can pause a film anytime you want. In the End, I think there are too many short films (e.g. from 1 minute to two hours), and way to few longer movies. This has to do with the industry, and the expectations of viewers which have become used to the “standard” one and a half hours at the theater. On a different medium like TV, longer is (or was) easier to finance and distribute. Thus we have “Heimat” or “Berlin Alexanderplatz”. Nowadays though, through VHS, DVD, etc. there would be no huge problem to shoot a 100 hour long film, and distribute it. So the former restrictions of TV have been solved (but TV itself is getting “better”, e.g. picture quality, sound quality, multiple aspect ratios, et.).
In he End I think it’s like this. Most books have 200 to 300 pages. But there are short stories, poetry, epics, etc. Same goes for film. Only we don’t have many epics, yet…
And unfortunately the serials (like Feuillades “Vampires” (1915)) have more or less been transformed into packaged TV formats.
The possibilities are infinte, but not many visionaries are working with film.
Length is always important
just ask any woman.
But seriously, any time a long take (or any other stylistic construction that [to you] calls attention to itself) examine it for the end it achieves. To use the example of Tarantino: in both Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown a long take of two people talking comes before a sequence that ends with a character getting killed. It doesn’t work for everyone, but, in the abstract, the idea is to create tension and charge the impending action.
Now while that’s not (usually) what Tarr et al. does, and I certainly can’t single out any one film by any one of them, but that’s the point: each film has to be taken on its own terms. Does the long take justify itself? Is there something that it restrains the filmmaker from doing that (you think) would improve the work? Does it distract the viewer? etc.
Susan Sontag made a point of championing long films, like Satantango, Berlin Alexanderplatz and Our Hitler, a Film from Germany.
A case of length matters AND what you do with it.
Filmgoers tend to be used to standard length films, and of course long films are awkward for viewing in one sitting in cinemas, so will often lose out in big screen appreciation, coming into their own (yet diminished too) when viewed at home. On the other hand there are lots of short gens too which are rarely seen on the big screen. How best can the tyranny of the 1/12- 2/12 hour viewing time be challenged to enable the promotion of many great films? Hitch spoke of the ideal length of a film being suited to the endurance of the human bladder, and his films certainly seem to fit their imposed timescales, but should filmgoers feel shortchanged by say an hour long film like Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl? And should programmers be more imaginative, with double bills of films of that length? Arthouse cinemas certainly could do more, both for longer and shorter films.
Claus Harding
Long films. Not 2 hrs or 3. 5hrs or more. The marathon jobs where the popcorn is the least of your worries; more like: do I have about a day to spare?
All joking aside, how about the films that demand that you truly give yourself over for a long period?
I have seen 1900 (the European cut) at 6hrs; I have “Das Boot” (technically speaking a cut-together series, but plays like one long film) at 4:52, and we watched Bela Tarr’s ‘Werckmeister Harmonies’ at a trim 2.5hrs to “warm up” for his monster ‘Satantango’ at 7.5hrs (haven’t done that one yet.)
The use of physical time above and beyond the other tools of the filmmaker has its own validity, I find. After a certain length of viewing, the mind starts forgetting most everything else, including the built-in expectation of being done in 2hrs. Bela Tarr, in particular (based on what we saw in ‘Harmonies’) really uses time with his very slow long takes. He forces you to ‘downshift’ to the pace of his world, and after a while it feels perfectly natural. You are in a trance when it finally ends.
A lot of people either simply will not sit through such films, or will say that it is nonsense on the part of the filmmaker. As far as I am concerned, that’s the filmmaker’s choice, not to show off, but because that’s how much time they need to tell the story their way. It won’t be for everyone, but then again, even at 2 hrs. neither is (take your pick.)
What do you think? Do you like long works?