When it comes to boring movies, I think I have a pretty high tolerance. A slow pace doesn't bother me as long as there is purpose to it. Minutia and quotidian detail are interesting to me so movies that linger on something simple and every day are okay. I remember in high school watching all six and a half hours of The Fortunes of War, a BBC miniseries with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, and being proud of myself for having the ability to sit through a Saharan amount of British dryness.
However, either I'm losing some of my youthful powers or French director Robert Bresson's ability to put me to sleep is more powerful than BBC filmmaking. I'm trying to watch Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest which, supposedly, is this great masterpiece of spiritual filmmaking. It was made in 1950 in France -- consequently, it is both in black and white and in French. Again, this is the sort of thing that I have a high tolerance for. I'm not a guy who falls asleep at the first sign of a subtitle.
But something about this movie is positively narcotic -- as in Ambien or Lunesta. Two nights in a row I've tried to finish it after Suzanne went to bed. Two nights in a row I've ended up passed out on the couch, fully dressed, with the DVD menu playing because the whole movie played and then returned to start. The first night I woke up at midnight and went to bed. Last night, it was three a.m. before I came back to the world of the living.
So now I have my portable DVD player here at work and I'm trying to pound out the last twenty minutes or so. The problem is this: it's boring. Immensely, soul-killingly boring. Yeah, I get that it has all these profound themes and meaningful imagery. Oooh, he feels imprisoned and so we constantly see him from behind the bars of gates. Got it. Fine. All the actor who plays the titular priest does is furrow his brow and look stricken. For two hours. Black and white Frenchiness and stricken looks. For two hours of my life. Ah well. I knew what I was getting into when I signed up for this whole Film Studies business so I guess I should stop complaining and start watching.
1 comment:
It's a pretty slow movie, but I rented it a couple years ago and enjoyed it quite a bit. I have some ground rules for myself, though: I only watch slooooow films during the daylight hours. Otherwise I, much like yourself, fall fast asleep. :)
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