When I was a child I was taught that it was unacceptable to call something -- a movie, a song, an activity -- "boring" because: 1) it doesn't make sense (a thing can't be boring, unless perhaps it is a drill bit; a person feels bored); and 2) it's indefensible, since the quality of "boringness" cannot be isolated or identified as an element of the thing itself; it's a feeling and it is yours).
So, saying something is "boring" is not exactly like saying something in a movie is "funny" or "moving" -- though, again, I'd prefer to place the responsibility for a response on the "feeler" rather than on the object -- because at least you can describe how something is presented or intended to be received as humorous or touching, even if you don't think it is. (Yes, there are exceptions to that, too.) I mean, a joke or a gag or an emotional situation can be objectively analyzed, but there are no agreed-upon cultural standards for evaluating "boring."¹
"Boring," I believe, is more like the word "entertaining" -- too vague to be of much use in a critical vocabulary. So, I might say I found something about a movie "tedious" or "engaging" or some other thesaurus word, but I'll attribute the emotion to myself and my taste, and even then not without a serious attempt to describe what I'm talking about, and to give at least one specific example.²
But now, "boring" is hot, at least in overheated Interwebular film criticism circles, since the publication of Dan Kois' New York Times Magazine piece called "Eating Your Cultural Vegetables," in which he says:
As a viewer whose default mode of interaction with images has consisted, for as long as I can remember, of intense, rapid-fire decoding of text, subtext, metatext and hypertext, I've long had a queasy fascination with slow-moving, meditative drama. Those are the kinds of films dearly loved by the writers, thinkers and friends I most respect, so I, too, seek them out; I usually doze lightly through them; and I often feel moved, if sleepy, afterward. But am I actually moved? Or am I responding to the rhythms of emotionally affecting cinema? Am I laughing because I get the jokes or because I know what jokes sound like?
Those are questions worth asking (and I've asked them of myself and others here, too). Perhaps, Kois suggests, certain movies are more like experiences you don't particularly enjoy while you're having them, but nevertheless you want to have had them -- which is precisely the way I feel about what they used to call "water cooler" movies that, well, you just had to see in order to talk about them with everybody else who was expected to see them. (I would include "The Dark Knight," J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek" reboot, "Avatar," "Inception" and other so-huge-as-to-be-unavoidable movies I found more fun to discuss online than they were for me to watch, while other pop hits like "Ratatouille," "Pineapple Express," "Superbad," "Oceans Eleven" and "True Grit" struck me not only as engaging, but as genuinely good movies.) Kois, on the other hand, writes:
... [Rather] rather than avoiding slow-moving films, I've viewed aridity as a sign of sophistication. Part of being a civilized watcher of films, I doggedly believe, is seeing movies that care little for my short attention span -- movies that find ways to burrow underneath my boredom to create a lasting impression. [...]
[Other critics] love the experience of watching movies that I find myself simply enduring in order to get to the good part -- i.e., not the part where you're watching the real-time birth of a Kazakh lamb, but the rest of your life, when you have watched it and you get to talk about it and write about it and remember it.
A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis responded in the pages of the NY Times with "In Defense of Slow and Boring" (June 6, 2011), with Scott citing Richard Schickel's cranky review of Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life":
For Mr. Schickel the problem with "The Tree of Life" is not just that it isn't a good movie ("inept" is his succinct appraisal of Mr. Malick's skill), but also, more seriously, that it gets the medium wrong. Movies, Mr. Schickel writes, "are an essentially worldly medium, playful and romantic, particularly in America, where, on the whole our best directors have stated whatever serious intentions they may harbor as ignorable asides. There are other ways of making movies, naturally, and there's always a small audience available for these noble strivings -- and good for them, I guess." [...]
In Mr. Schickel's argument, "pretentious" functions, like "boring" elsewhere, as an accusation that it is almost impossible to refute, since it is a subjective hunch masquerading as a description.
Precisely. Likewise, Kois observes, "Surely there are die-hard Hou Hsiao-hsien fans out there who grit their teeth every time a new Pixar movie comes out." You may fill in your own auteurs, genres, styles on either side of the equation. As I've said many times, "slow" and "boring" don't usually go together for me, anyway. A movie can go on auto-pilot at any speed, and it seems to me it's more likely to devolve into incoherence the more it tries to bombard the viewer with senseless "action" in the form of rapid cuts and frenetic movement. (Like I say, nothing puts me to sleep faster than a gunfight where you can't tell what's going on and you know nothing matters.) Or dialog scenes that are put together so mechanically that (to paraphrase Richard T. Jameson's memorable phrase about Ron Howard's oeuvre) the movies practically watch themselves.
Scott puts it this way:
Lately, I think, protests against the deep-dish and the highbrow ... mask another agenda, which is a defense of the corporate status quo. For some reason it needs to be asserted, over and over again, that the primary purpose of movies is to provide entertainment, that the reason everyone goes to the movies is to have fun. Any suggestion to the contrary, and any film that dares, however modestly, to depart from the orthodoxies of escapist ideology, is met with dismissal and ridicule.
Trailer announcer: "Adam Sandler is Jack. Adam Sandler is Jill.... This November, Adam Sandler s--ts in your eyes, ears and mouth! It's Adam Sandler in [scatological noises]. F--- you! Rated Argh for Pirates!" Is this "South Park" version different from the actual trailer? Or the one for "Grown-Ups"? Oh, that one was about pee...
I would go (and have gone) further to re-emphasize that "fun" and "entertainment" are not the same things to all people, and that escapism³ itself doesn't necessarily qualify as either. For me to have fun, to be entertained by a movie, I also have to be engaged, interested, provoked, maybe even challenged. If there's nothing to think about, nothing that even holds still long enough for me to get a good look at it, it's not much fun for me. I'd rather focus my attention on something else. Like something I can focus my attention on.
Earlier this week, Andrew O'Hehir stepped into the discussion with a piece called "In praise of boredom, at the movies and in life." In one respect he echoes Scott, observing that this critical debate
... has a whole lot to do with the ancient 20th-century feud between advocates of art-house cinema, which is essentially a remnant of what used to be called "high culture," and fans of mass-market popcorn entertainment. Which is weird, because one side won that battle a long time ago but refuses to acknowledge its victory and wants to go on acting like the aggrieved underdog.
But O'Hehir is not against boredom, per se. He's all for it. The boredom of his generation of teenagers in the 1970s, he reckons, eventually produced the revivifying musical energy of punk, for example, "and then (God help us) the global phenomenon of 'alternative culture,' which flourished in an interesting way for quite a while before itself attaining mastodon-scale boredom."
There's also the question (which Dargis raises by recalling the real-time meatloaf-making scene in Chantal Akerman's "Jeanne Dielman") of whether some films set out to provoke boredom in the viewer for aesthetic reasons. But since when did "thinking" become synonymous with "boring"? Dargis writes:
Faced with duration not distraction, your mind may wander, but there's no need for panic: it will come back. In wandering there can be revelation as you meditate, trance out, bliss out, luxuriate in your thoughts, think.
Thinking is boring, of course (all that silence), which is why so many industrially made movies work so hard to entertain you. If you're entertained, or so the logic seems to be, you won't have the time and head space to think about how crummy, inane and familiar the movie looks, and how badly written, shoddily directed and indifferently acted it is. And so the images keep zipping, the sounds keep clanging and the actors keep shouting as if to reassure you that, yes, the money you spent for your ticket was well worth all this clamor, a din that started months, years, earlier when the entertainment companies first fired up the public-relations machine and the entertainment media chimed in to sell the buzz until it rang in your ears.
Now Scott and Dargis have opened the online discussion in an "Ask the Critics" feature: "How Boring is Boring Enough?" and are soliciting questions and comments from readers, to which they will respond next week.
The Kois piece that started this particular brouhaha is based on the idea of "aspirational viewing" -- movies people say you "have to see" because they're good (and good for you?), but that you (or Kois) may find grueling to actually sit through. Like me and "The Phantom Menace" or "Avatar." But there's another side to it, too -- not just that corporate entertainment products encourage us to amuse ourselves to death, but that the bulk of what's available to us is, in fact, crap. (See the recent "South Park" episode "You're Getting Old," in which Stan turns 10 and realizes that almost everything he used to like -- in music, movies, video games, desserts -- is just shit. Literally. Well, metaphorically, too, but also literally.)
What all these critics are saying, as I see it, is that they have their own criteria for determining what is worthwhile, and what they want from movies when they devote their time and attention (or attention-deficits) to them. But I think all of them (and I include myself) detect a certain hostility (Godard called it "Contempt") coming from the movies themselves -- whether they set out to try our patience (deliberately "boring" us, just to see how much we can take!) or, as in the "South Park" episode, defecating all over us with crass, insipid, lackluster product-pictures and laughing all the way to the investment bank. We're talking about movies. Maybe we can't help but take it personally.
Me, I think if you like crap, there's plenty of it to choose from, and you should not worry about what anyone else says. Tonight I plan to re-watch Tarkovsky's "Solaris" -- for fun!
AN AFTERTHOUGHT/clarification from a comment I made at Some Came Running:
When I encounter something like Kois's article I don't think it's a question of "taste." Sure, taste is something you're born with, or you acquire and develop as you learn and grow. This, I think, is more a matter of core values -- as if I were to try to have a conversation about morality with a religious fundamentalist. Even if we reached the same conclusions, we wouldn't be likely to do so for the same reasons. When I read Kois's article I quickly realized we don't value the same things in movies. (I've run into the same thing with the Nolan fans at my blog, too. Some think movies are puzzles and that as long as everything is explained, one way or another, they're satisfied.) So, I think it's a little too easy to say (not that anybody here was) that, "Oh, we have different tastes." More like, "Oh, we have entirely different value systems, conceptions about what movies are, and what we find worthwhile in them."
UPDATE (06/10/11): Glenn Kenny explains why "slow" does not automatically equal boredom-inducing: "I have literally never been bored watching an Andrei Tarkovsky film because there is so very much to see in every single shot, and in the way every single shot relates to the next and the one before and so on."
He objects to Kois' and others' assertions that Tarkovsky intends to bore the viewer with his films:
I believe that Tarkovsky would object to the idea that his films were "deliberately" boring. Although Tarkovsky made intensely personal films that hewed uncompromisingly to his own vision, he was very invested in engaging his audience and extremely proud when his 1975 film "The Mirror," considered here in the West to be one of his most obscure, even gnomic movies, was something of a popular hit in Russia. His definition of film, as given in the title of his book of strung-together essays on the art of filmmaking, was "sculpting in time," and thus pacing was extremely important to him. And yes, he was interested in slowing things down, and did so quite often, as in the looong shot of the three main characters in "Stalker" as they make their way into the "Zone," with, among other relentlessly repetitive features, its droning, maddening click of their conveyance travelling over the railroad tracks. And this shot was possibly meant to strike the viewer as odd, or even aesthetically querulous, but still did not constitute, entirely, a form of negative engagement. I'm reminded of one of the phrase David Foster Wallace ascribed to his sister Amy in the acknowledgements of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: "Just How Much Reader-Annoyance Are You Shooting For Here, Exactly?" and its implication that sometimes a little reader-annoyance can be a not-bad thing, at least in terms of bracing the reader. Tarkovsky's pronouncement on film art were/are idiosyncratic enough to strike some as either maddening or perversely impractical, but this chunk from his essay on editing in Sculpting makes good sense: "The dominant, all-powerful factor of the film image is rhythm, expressing the course of time within the frame. The actual passage of time is also made clear in the characters' behavior, the visual treatment and the sound--but these are all accompanying features, the absence of which, theoretically would in no way affect the existence of the film. One cannot conceive of a cinematic work with no sense of time passing through the shot, but one can easily imagine a film with no actors, music, décor or even editing." Wait, did I say "makes good sense?" Hmm. Of course, today one doesn't HAVE to imagine a cinematic work with no sense of time passing through the frame; in the works of Michael Bay, there is no time for time to register itself passing through the frame, rather, the frames themselves are instead keeping/constituting time.
Doctor: "Look at these two pictures. One of them is an ad for Kevin James' new movie 'The Zookeeper' and the other is a turd in a microwave. Which one is the ad for 'The Zookeeper'?"
_ _ _ _ _
¹ Manohla Dargis ("In Defense of Slow and Boring") on "Hangover II" and working toward a personal definition of "boring":
Filled with gags and characters recycled from the first "Hangover," the sequel is grindingly repetitive and features scene after similar scene of characters staring at one another stupidly, flailing about wildly and asking what happened. This is the boring that Andy Warhol, who liked boring, found, well, boring.
"Of course, what I think is boring," Warhol wrote in his memoir "Popism," "must not be the same as what other people think is, since I could never stand to watch all the most popular action shows on TV, because they're essentially the same plots and the same shots and the same cuts over and over again. Apparently, most people love watching the same basic thing, as long as the details are different."
Warhol's own films are almost always called boring, usually by people who have never seen or sampled one, including minimalist epics like "Empire," eight hours of the Empire State Building that subverts the definition of what a film is (entertaining, for one).
Point made. But was "Empire" ever intended to be watched straight through?
² Hence my ambivalence about the "useful but not very respected mode of criticism" that Girish Shambu has memorably tagged "micro-criticism," the short bursts of movie-related writing that appear in social media like Twitter and Facebook, in blog comments, or otherwise facilitated by the Internet. Some do it well (and by that I mean they can make one coherent, provocative observation that gets you thinking), some are terrible (making ludicrously arrogant, unsupported A----- W-----like pronouncements: "This is Good; that is Bad."), and some simply cheat (I consider it cheating when, as with some of the examples in Masha Tupitsyn's book "LACONIA: 1,200 Tweets on Film," paragraphs are simply doled out in multiple 140-character chunks; the only thing "new" about that is the delivery system). And most of it is hit-or-miss with a preponderance of the latter. I'm not being dismissive, however, when I suggest that the term should be "mini-criticism" rather than "micro-criticism." "Micro-" implies looking at something in close detail, something that requires a greater investment (at least in terms of character count). "Mini-," though it may sound belittling, is I think the more appropriate term -- one little idea-nugget at a time.
Here's an example of good mini-criticism from Tupitsyn's book: "Eastern Promises & A History Violence are twin parables: one film looks at violence from the outside in and the other from the inside out." That's something worth thinking about as you examine how the films work.
³ What does "escapism" mean, exactly? My dictionary says it's "the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, esp. by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy." So, how is a science-fiction movie like Andrei Tarkovsky's "Solaris" (1972), which Kois says he found boring, not escapism? What could be more "escapist" than the fantasy of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives," which is a kind of fantasy you haven't already seen a gazillion times before? These are rhetorical questions.
NOTE: I've learned (via Twitter) that Masha Tupitsyn took issue with my characterization of multiple 140-character tweets on one line of thought as "cheating." In her very enjoyable book, she writes about the way her use of Twitter needed to evolve. I hope it's clear that I was saying "cheat" with tongue in cheek, though I do still think the primary challenge Twitter poses is to compose and distill thoughts into those arbitrary-for-technological-reasons140-character chunks. Those are the rules of the game... but you know what they say about rules.
Trailer announcer: "Jim Carrey has a bunch of turds in his apartment! It's Jim Carrey in whatever -- you'll pay to go see it. F--k you! July 12."
31 Comments
Thanks for pointing out the subjectivism of "boring." I've been a Malick fan since I saw "The Thin Red Line," but could not convince the "Saving Private Ryan" crowd that TTRL had any credibility as a WWII film, because it didn't have the Spielberg entertaining qualities that SPR had. I tended to think SPR showed the physical effects of war, while TTRL showed the psychological effects. People argued TTRL was too long, yet it was (according to run time) one minute longer than SPR. So now I think, "this film isn't boring, you're just lazy. You don't want to work for anything." It's akin to nursing versus cutting and chewing your own steak. Nursing is fine, when you're an infant, but you eventually have to grow up.
And the "South Park" episode had me in tears, I laughed so hard...because that's exactly how I feel when I go to the theater these days. I looked at my wife and said, "Is this what it's like being married to me?"
Honestly, I think this is a great discussion, and I'm glad to see it being had. I'd love to contribute, but my attention span has been so degraded by modern super-media that I--a college educated 40 year old who used to devour books whole in single sittings--can no longer be bothered to give the articles a thorough reading.
Absolutely not joking.
"Boring" is just about the worst thing you can say about a comedy. If it's boring it didn't make you laugh, and comedies are supposed to make you laugh. I'm not sure if examining the jokes in great detail is useful in any way, because you can't convince a person - or yourself - that a joke is or is not funny. You might be able to convince them - or yourself - that it's important in some way, or that it's formally impressive, but that's not nearly the same thing, and the assertion lacks import or interest if the other party doesn't laugh. You can highlight subtly implanted jokes, which I guess is as useful from a formal/critical POV as highlighting subtly implanted themes, but when it comes to finding something funny, the reasons, I think, are so subjective (and innate) as to be almost arbitrary. (Jim, you're a lot more sophisticated than I am and you found "Pineapple Express" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" funny, both movies that I found boooring in spots, and I'll laugh through a 2.5 hour minimalist comedy epic like "Va Savoir." See? Arbitrary.)
As for the rest of this argument, I don't really understand it (I should note I've only been exposed to it here, right now). I don't think Kois is trying to uphold the corporate status quo, but I don't understand ignoring a whole type of movie either. I think it comes down to this:
Some movies offer momentary thrills that can only be taken as whatever they are, like a kung fu fight or a poop joke or a dramatic situation that exploits universal emotions (sports movie - desire to win) for no reason other than to evince them.
Other movies don't offer such "fast" or "simple" pleasures but take time to build some thought process or emotional situation into some meaningful picture or conclusion. I think that what happens in "Andrei Rublev" is that Andrei realizes there is no God, his painting aren't holy, but he will paint them anyway, because that's what he does. This conclusion would lack potency if it wasn't backed by 3 hours of observations about how the world (in Andrei Rublev) works (that's what it was about, right? What was it about?).
Of course the lines blur all the time. Some examples of each are boring and some aren't. The ones that don't connect with you are boring. The ones that do aren't.
I'm starting to think - and this is very hypocritical in the context of my previous posts here - that film criticism is too encumbered by the desire to prove something is "good" or important in some way. Maybe it should be replaced by film reporting: instead of critics telling people on a weekly basis what is "good," they should just tell them what a movie is like. Instead of proving why Hitchcock was a good director (not influential, but good) they should just describe what his movies do - all of what they do, from every inflection in an actor's voice to every sound cue. A proper report on a movie would take into account everything about it, right? It would take as long to read, or longer, as the movie takes to watch. Just a thought.
Jim, where the word "boring" gets used to much, I think a word you suggested is more valuable, if anyone wants to combine critical thinking with their subjective impressions. That word is "engaging."
For example, I remember a friend telling me once about what he thought would be a great movie. It was set in Star Wars, Star Trek, something science-fictional, and involved the hero and heroine fighting their way through a massive, futuristic bureaucracy. Since I had just finished doing my tax return, more fighting with bureaucracy was the last thing I wanted to hear about, even in an sf context. I.e, that was something I wanted to escape from, and thus would not be engaged by.
If people can figure out why they are bored, why the movie didn't engage them, interesting, even insightful conversation can follow. But otherwise I'm with you: "It's boring" is a valid opinion, but not a useful one.
I think there is a tendency for people who are supporters of popcorn entertainment (I am supporter of it too, as long as its good) to believe that boring is boring is boring. In other words, they can't accept that what is boring to them may not be boring to others. When they see Anton Corbijn's The American, they see it as boring and think supporters of the film like it despite its boringness. But I can honestly say I was more entertained during that movie than most movies that were released last year. I was not even bored for a minute. It was a riveting experience. Similarly, I may not have thought The Tree of Life (you can't avoid it) was the masterpiece it's been publicized as (perhaps after repeated viewings), but it never bored me. It seems hard for people to accept this idea, but my version of boring could be different from theirs.
But what is the definition of boring then? I would say it means that the film did not engage you in any way. And then couldn't you say that that is, in fact, a fault of the film itself? When people tell me they were bored by 2001: A Space Odyssey, I like to say that that is your own problem, not the films. But can't a case be made that when a film does not engage you, effectively boring you, it has failed? I think a case like that can be made. I will admit I honestly was bored during L'Avventura. And I realize that the slow pace and ennui of the film was essential to its very being, but I can't say I enjoyed it. Does this mean my film evaluating skills aren't good? No. I respect Kois for being completely honest and saying that certain films do bore him and he can't escape that fact.
I think you must, perhaps, not stop at boring. It is, for film criticism, only scratching the surface of how you feel about a film. Why did this film bore you? What did the director do to make this film boring? Was it style, atmosphere, story etc.? As you like to say, what appears on the screen cannot be separated from your emotions. One affects the other. But I'm not sure I could tell you why L'Avventura bored me. It shouldn't (loved Blowup) but it did. I'm very conflicted on this matter.
"What all these critics are saying, as I see it, is that they have their own criteria for determining what is worthwhile, and what they want from movies when they devote their time and attention (or attention-deficits) to them."
Schickel cuts straight to the bone on this issue when he states that movies should function in a clearly defined way - "playful and romantic". This is where the line is being crossed for me. It's one thing to say that you are not interested or engaged by a certain type of movie; it's another to assume that a medium must come to us in a particular way to be valid or worthwhile. It's this type of dismissiveness that I find unbecoming of a critic. Are movies "an essentially worldly medium" because they've had their roots in low culture? Didn't we get past that junk a long time ago? Do we really want directors and movie people to limit their aspirations to codified modes of storytelling just because it doesn't jive with some preconceived idea that we have?
I could accept this type of limiting from a casual moviegoer, but from a critic it is indefensible. We should want the people in movies to push the medium in new, unexpected directions, even if they should fail trying.
Slow and boring are relative concepts, as you and others have already pointed out. But even if you're not engaged with the pacing of a movie, you might at least try to understand why that pacing is being employed. Kois, in his article, mentions "Meek's Cutoff", a movie that moves like a snail compared to most Hollywood products...which falls in line with the fact that the people in it are moving across land at a snails pace compared to our cars and planes. Reichardt's choice in pacing (though her other films are similarly paced) has a direct connection to the narrative elements. She wants you to get a sense of what it was like to travel vast stretches of barren Oregon land while leading oxen and wagons in 1845. You can't pace a movie like "Meek's Cutoff" the same way you do an action-thriller or standard comedy. You don't have to automatically enjoy "Meek's Cutoff" once you make this observation, but at least you can come to understand and possibly appreciate where it's coming from.
Mr. Emerson, I agree with you that the adjective "boring" is highly subjective. But then again, practically all adjectives have a certain degree of subjectivity. I believe there is a strong correlation between the terms "boring" and "incomprehensible" (and/or perhaps "irrelevant"). For example, if a person expends a considerable amount of thought and analysis trying to understand a movie and either fails to do so or finds that the knowledge gleaned from the film was not worth the trouble, then he/she may be inclined to condemn the movie as "boring". Alternatively, if the movie viewer discovers that his strenuous attempts to understand the movie do succeed and do mean something to him/her, he/she may not label the movie "entertaining", but at least label the film "thought-provoking" and "profound". Finally, a movie viewer must earn the right to use the term "boring". If you do not expend the effort to understand the movie, the movie is not necessarily "boring". YOU are mentally lazy and lethargic!
While I find the discussion interesting because intelligent, thoughtful people are involved and all of these articles make interesting points, this whole affair is really quite pointless. You like what you like, I like what I like, and as a wise man once said, "Never the twain shall meet." Hopefully we will find some middle ground but we'll never all agree 100%. One person's "film veggies" may be another person's meat and potatoes to another person's hummus and pita. You won't ever convince everyone that beets are delicious, although some of us really love a good beet.
"So now I think, "this film isn't boring, you're just lazy. You don't want to work for anything." It's akin to nursing versus cutting and chewing your own steak. Nursing is fine, when you're an infant, but you eventually have to grow up."
I think your attitude is just as bad as those who claim that a film is boring. Which I hate BTW. I remember asking someone who had seen The Godfather for the first time, why they disliked it. 'It was boring.' How do I respond to that? I can't. It's one thing to think that a film is boring, but another to use it as a reason for disliking it.
Your attitude, however, comes across as superior and patronizing. If someone thinks that a film is 'boring', it does not automatically mean that they are a lazy child who can't cut their own steak and needs to grow up. Not does it mean that someone who isn't 'bored' by the film, is a superior cinema watcher or more of an adult.
Perhaps they genuinely are 'bored' by the film. Furthermore, not every film deserves (and I acknowledge that this is completely subjective) the viewer to run a marathon.
One of the interesting things about that South Park episode is that it's implied -- and possibly even true -- that part of the problem really is with Stan. When the doctor plays some Dylan for Stan, and he thinks that sounds like s--t too, the doctor identifies him as not having just grown out of old tastes, but failing to find new ones -- and thus becoming "a cynical a--hole." There's something interesting there in the idea that dissatisfaction with the current Hollywood product (or whatever is popular) should be accompanied by a real curiosity and drive to find something more interesting and better. But nothing is really flawless; nothing is wholly, 100% original; nothing is without potential criticism, if one is in the mind to do so. Similarly, Stan initially only hates his friends' taste, but then soon becomes to hate them for having it, and while a certain amount of misanthropy is reasonable and expected, at a certain point hating everything that mainstream-type people say leads to a real failure of empathy. Maybe on some degree, you have to be able to understand why your friends like the crap they do, so that you can avoid judging them and so being cut off from, and everyone, and the potential joys that people really can produce.
It is, of course, possible that the point of having older bands sound terrible to Stan is more that The Police and Bob Dylan are no better than the crap nowadays (which I could imagine Trey Parker asserting about The Police, and of Dylan's singing if not his songwriting). But even a flower looks like crap to Stan at the end, so I'm thinking we're supposed to recognize that if Stan finds a way out, it will be to regain some enthusiasm for something. Maybe eventually Dylan won't sound like s--t to him anymore. Or maybe he'll find someone else who doesn't.
Yes, poor Stan is experiencing a kind of anhedonia that starts with Tween Wave music and extends to... everything, even his friends and nature itself. He says, after the Sandler trailer, something like: "Excuse me for seeing things as they really are." I think this happens to many of us at times -- but it's an alienating and disillusioning feeling when, for example, your friends find things enjoyable (Jerry Lewis, Jerky Boys, Adam Sandler) and you just don't. Sometimes you can pretend, at least for a while. But for how long? I don't think Stan rejects his friends as much as they reject him for not sharing their enthusiasms. He's got this dark cloud over him that scares them (see Albee's "A Delicate Balance" or Rabe's "Sticks & Bones"). Or maybe what we have here is "The Iceman Cometh" to "South Park." Can Stan ever regain his innocence, recapture his previous, uncritical/uncynical way of looking at the world? Or will he have to teach himself a form of denial in order to live with it? Can he convince himself that Tween Wave music is NOT shit (at least until 2012, when it is designed to expire)? Or will he sink into suicidal depression and off himself at the end of the show? Parker & Stone's contract has one more half-season to go. Stay tuned!
I'm interested that Dan Kois feels so compelled to watch movies like Meek's Cutoff when he knows he probably won't like them. As if having his own tastes makes him a philistine or something.
I think many people are insecure about what kinds of movies they like (I know I've been guilty of putting on appearances). And when it comes to fans of mainstream movies, people like me, who enjoy things on the "slow and boring" side, probably aren't helping so much. Especially when we sip Bordeaux and sneer through our monocles...
Sigh. Can't we all just get along?
This article was more boring and pretentious than all of Malick's films combined. Also, your use of block quoting is dubious at best.
I am going to ignore your asinine grammar lesson, because language is something that grows and changes. Etymology may suggest that the original definition of boring would not be an adjective meaning something that causes a person to feel bored, however, the most common use of the term. The colloquialism of boring as a synonym to uninteresting or dull is far more common than the literal definition of "a drill boring into something".
Slow and boring do not mean the same there, there are movies I enjoy immensely that I would objectively call "slow moving" but they aren't boring. I like lots of slowly paced movies, and lots of long movies and lots of movies the average audience might not like. But I still have the right to find Terrance Malick's movies boring, because they are. I don't enjoy his style, I don't think he has as much to say as he thinks he does and I find his directorial choices repetitive. That picture up there of the trees at the top of this article could be from The Thin Red Line, The New World or The Tree of Life.
PS Did you also really suggest that The Dark Knight and Inception are not entertaining movies? You honestly believe they are movies people saw because they felt they "had" to? I know people that have watched each of those movies a dozen times.
I've always felt that's it's a little presumptuous to say things like "I don't think he has as much to say as he thinks he does" or this movie isn't as clever as it thinks it is. The reason I feel this way is that as an audience, we can't always be sure what a director thinks about his work unless he or she expresses an opinion on the film. Ultimately, regardless of how much the director thinks he or she is saying, the individual viewer will either take away something or they won't.
I don't get the criticism that the shot of the trees could have been in any of Malick's movies. What's wrong with that?
Don't Nolan's movies all look alike to a great extent? They do to me. When I try to think of what any Nolan movie looks like the only thing that comes to mind is brown/black tones, and handsome young men in nice clothes. Part of the reason people like all (or most) of Nolan's films, and Malick's, is that there are certain tonal similarities across everything they do.
For me, exposition is just about the most boring thing a movie can do, so needless to say, I'm not a Nolan fan.
I suspect that the adjective 'boring,' when applied to what used to be called 'art films' (a perfectly good phrase that should be revived, but that's another discussion), is often used as a more intelligent-sounding alternative to the adolescent complaint, "That movie was stupid." This usually means "that movie made me feel stupid because I couldn't understand it" and is a classic example of psychological projection: unable to admit my own failure to grasp, I project the stupidity I fear in myself onto the film that provoked my fear. Maybe the 'boringness' (to coin a word) is not in our films but in our selves. Movies have a lot to answer for--especially Adam Sandler movies (Punch Drunk Love excepted)--but I'm highly tempted to say that anyone who thinks a film as beautiful and sublime as The Thin Red Line is 'boring' is saying much more about himself than about Malick. Anyone bored by My Dinner With Andre or Before Sunrise or Fanny and Alexander or Time Regained is objectively failing as a film viewer (in my subjective opinion). And anybody bored by Citizen Kane...well, I just don't want to know that person.
I think the most boring movies are the mediocre, forgettable ones--the ones that Hollywood releases every week instead of coming up with original ideas [snobby film nerd mode OFF]. A romantic comedy that takes a formula and does nothing new with it is just as boring (if not more) than a slow, pretentious art film.
That's a good point. Boredom usually sets in during a movie when I'm four steps ahead of the plot, waiting for the characters to catch up.
Either that, or plot stasis. I watched Sofia Coppola's Somewhere this weekend, and in four shots, I had gotten the entire point of the movie, which left 80 minutes of static, silent people smoking and drinking and moping.
What I mostly don't get is why people, when they don't like an acclaimed movie, feel like being defiant, wearing their dislike as a badge of pride, and acting like they're pointing our the Emperor has no clothes. As you say, "boring" and "entertaining" are subjective - there's nothing wrong with not liking something, but why would you then immediately suspect people who do of being poseurs, or worse, self-deluded.
Anyway, I weighed in on the whole matter here in more detail. It's an interesting discussion - though it does make me feel testy.
I know what you mean, but it's all in how people present their arguments. It's one thing to go into detail about what you think works or doesn't work in the movie. But to use the TomatoMeter defense ("Hey, look -- everybody else *likes* it, why can't you? You're in the minority, so you must be wrong!") is no real argument at all. THAT is when I have to wonder why certain people find it so hard to accept that people are going to see a movie in a variety of different ways, and there will never be full consensus on anything. Even people who "like" something (hate that word) will have different reasons. I've seen people claim that they find "Citizen Kane" dull. Obviously, they're in the minority, but that's immaterial. It's up to them to cite the movie to explain why they see it that way. Without that, there are no grounds for an actual discussion.
Your post reminds me of the scene in 'Manhattan' where the character are discussing 'The Academy of the Overrated' (another vague, useless term like 'boring').
And if nothing else, Kois' having eaten the "cultural vegetables" will at least help him get more of the jokes in vintage episodes of The Simpsons or Woody Allen movies.
For a contemplative film, even if you don't "like" it, maybe the film gives you some ideas you could mull over.
For Batman and Robin, you think, none of these villains was really terrifying, the choreography was abysmal, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!
Batman Returns, meanwhile does a good job of being a blockbuster while not falling into the mediocre pitfall that befalls many big-budget films. Also a great study of the danger of nihilism.
I think that one point missed here is that another reason a film can be boring to someone is that they simply aren't interested in the subject. Like maybe there's a courtroom drama that's very well made, but someone just has no interest in the law or lawyers making speeches, etc. And I think this happens even more with movies that discuss (literally and figuratively) a specific concept or idea you don't care about. Just as if you were at a party avoiding certain conversations because the main point holds no interest for you.
I am reminded that Kiarostami often says that he does not mind if audiences fall asleep during his films, so long as they dream about them thereafter. I very much admire this idea. I have never found any of Kiarostami's films boring, but I admit to nodding off during the third round of Certified Copy - simply because the sound design in that film features such a soothing palette - and when the lights went up I felt refreshed enough to say aloud, "Wonderful film."
Horror films are easily the most "boring" types of films I have ever seen, even more so than art films (at least those films might include something "purdy" to look at). I can't even find humor in the cheesiest of horror flicks.
The reason for my lack of interest in horror films is probably due to the fact that I grew up with video games and, whether or not you enjoy games, you have to admit that books and films just cannot give you that same feeling of fear and/or excitement that games often do (I'm not just talking about action-oriented games; games that require you to think are often more daunting than ones that just involve "press this button to kill something"). Then again, it could be that horror films just aren't scary and tend to rely on generic characters, stories, and tons of violence and gore.
"See the recent "South Park" episode "You're Getting Old," in which Stan turns 10 and realizes that almost everything he used to like -- in music, movies, video games, desserts -- is just shit. Literally. Well, metaphorically, too, but also literally."
I find that ironic considering I think the same way about South Park. Since you mentioned South Park in this article, I have to state that I also find most popular cartoons today (Family Guy, The Simpsons, Futurama, and of course South Park) to be extremely boring, and it's because they take all the principles that make a good cartoon, and just flat-out ignore them. I guess that's what happens when cartoons are made by executives and writers instead of animators. *sigh*
Today's cartoons involve ugly characters, with vacant eyes, walking into a room and throwing a bunch of one-liners and jokes in the hopes that someone will eventually laugh, and I find that about as uninteresting as it is sad. I guess South Park is slightly different, but it's all just a jumbled mess of cheap gags to me. I don't have enough room or time to describe what makes a funny cartoon, so you could always check out johnkstuff.blogspot.com for a veritable treasure-trove of animation knowledge (though it may take a few days to absorb all that info). Sorry for the rant there... :(
In the case of horror films, I don't find them engaging and therefore consider them boring. In the case of modern cartoons, the creators just don't use the medium's strengths to convey anything interesting. They're really just sitcoms or sketch shows, but with cartoon characters.
The problem is most of modern animation is fundamentally broken compared to 30s-50s. No one has stepped up to the plate to fill Chuck Jone' or Bob Clamett. Disney, from trailers, shows no signs of once being headed by the Nine Old Men. South Park may be "illustrated radio," but the pickings are slim. Hopefully John K. will make a film to fill the void.
This is an interesting conversation. What does "boring" really mean? Can an object be boring? Can a person be boring? Or is being bored only an emotional state of being, infinite in the ways it is manifested, depending on the person experiencing it?
I think it's obvious, in a philosophical sense, that an object can't be "boring." It can only be viewed as being "boring" by something able to experience "boredom." So it is subjective. One man's idea of boring may be another's idea of thrilling.
I'm not sure it would be possible to make a film that bored people on a universal scale, even if you were trying. There would always be a naysayer who revered your film, in spite of your worst intentions.
I watched Gus Van Sant's "Last Days" with a friend, and she was bored to the point of anger. I was transfixed. So was it boring, or wasn't it? It depends on who you ask. And even then, you can't be sure.
You have to watch for yourself.
Interesting comments here. I thoroughly identify with Stan, because I now find almost all of popular culture (and architecture, sports events, hot new products, political debates etc. etc.) to be mind-numbing. The alienation runs deep when you realise how much this cuts you off from social circles and the workplace. It's like being the sober one when all your friends are drunk - everyone getting oh-so-excited about nonsense. Because let's face it: there is an increasing amount of shit being sold to us from ever more corners (I got a text message from the phone company the other day reminding me to go see Green lantern). Feels like a retreat to find solace in old music and movies, but like your commentator above, classic literature has become a problem because 'new' media has screwed up my concentration span so much. Reading 'proper' books feels like starting a workout regime after years of couch-surfing over pizza.
As for Malick - there's Thin Red Line boring (contemplative), but then there's New World boring (zzzzzz). Tree of Life looks too much like the latter (and ridiculously pretentious), and I got sick of any movie longer than two-and-a-half hours when they all seemed to be running way over that length a few years ago (what happened to intermissions?). And call me a philistine, but I can't remember staying awake through any Russian movie from Eisenstein onwards. There's American dull, German dull, French dull etc. - but Russian dull can be as obnoxious as Transformers.
W Kasper
Calling Eisenstein's films boring or dull is to admit you have not watched any of his films. They are among the most dynamic films in the history of cinema. Perhaps they did not engage you because you don't like silent films or old movies? But they are far from dull or what most people define as boring.
Also the idea of 'Russian dull' makes absolutely no sense. Maybe you can explain what you mean? Perhaps you just don't like Russians?
When I say a movie is "boring," what I usually mean is that it's derviative. South Park nailed it in the scence with the movie trailers. If you've seen one Adam Sandler comedy, you've seen them all. There's no bigger turn off than the same old thing. That's why most marriages don't last.
I suppose it's the nature of the Hollywood beast that it churns out these wholly unoriginal, cliche turds over and over. When the first one makes a big splash, they fill the bowl to overflowing. I don't know why people keep sopping it all up, but hey, there's no accounting for taste.
Of course I've been bored by movies I consider to be "original" as well. But I'd much rather be bored by something like The Thin Red Line than by something involving CGI penguins, or another movie that revolves solely around Julia Roberts' smile.
I recently watched Café Lumière and I felt I had more personal experience to draw from for this topic, because I definitely found that movie boring.
I think it has to do with Intimacy and Speed. Intimacy would consist of close-ups, medium shots, shots where we look at an actor head-on, where we can make out subtle changes in their expression, and (less necessarily, IMO) dialogue that gives you a sense of what kind of person a character is, what it would be like to stand next to them, to talk to them, go to a movie with them, etc. Speed would be the rapidity of the editing, but also how long a scene/shot takes to make its point, and how long it lasts after it's made its point.
I will not make assumptions about a filmmaker's or audience member's intentions or reactions but when you extricate both Intimacy and Speed from your whole movie, I would say you risk it coming off as (I'll steal a word from David Bordwell) academic.
In Café Lumière, Hou Hsiao-hsien's tribute to Ozu, we have scene after scene made up of single, perfectly composed shots with the characters often far away, having desultory conversations that almost always comment on the themes in some indirect (but obviously-indirect, and so indirectly-direct) way, or medium shots with the actors turned away from the camera and discussing the dramatic situations in quiet, unemotive voices.
The movie is about a woman who gets pregnant by her boyfriend and shuns convention by deciding not to marry him, much to the chagrin of her traditional father and stepmother. A lot of dramatic potential (imagine the reverse, though: a man gets a woman pregnant and decides not to marry her. Doesn't sound so liberating, does it?). But look at the way the father character is developed: before the revelation, when the woman visits her parents, he's sitting at the table, being served by his wife. This shot lasts forever. Later, after he finds out, we have him sitting in profile as his wife urges (although the word "urge" might be too strong to describe the actress' performance) him to talk about it (saying "You never talk" or some other such thing). This shot is held for - I don't know exactly how long, but it felt like eons. We get the point: the point is that he's a traditional patriarch who refuses to discuss things. We know literally nothing else about his character, so it's hard to feel emotionally involved (Ozu would always develop his characters' personalities before plunging them into dramatic situations). This isn't subtle, it only appears that way: really it's bludgeoning you with its "subtlety," and it was easy for me to get bored once I felt I got the point.
Every character is developed this way. As much or more attention is paid to composition. The compositions were perfect. But I don't know how to get emotionally involved in a composition. Ozu constructed perfect shots but he didn't dwell on them for so long, he used them merely to create atmosphere, to say something about setting, before or between intimate character scenes (I just watched "A Story of Floating Weeds," which has the ASL of a Hollywood talkie, or shorter).
When a director shoves a perfect shot in your face and keeps it there for a full minute, he's just showing off. When the only scenes between his romantic leads are made up of unemotional conversations that are meant to import intellectual messages like "they're not in love," "they are only seeing each other out of habit" or "they're more interested in their work than each other," it's easy - perhaps intrinsically necessary - to feel detached.
I can understand that some people could like a movie like this, but I don't understand how, or if the word in this context denotes an emotional reaction, or just an intellectual recognition of a director's skill at communicating something indirectly. Read what A.O. Scott had to say about the movie, and he liked it:
'"Café Lumière" stands in relation to "Tokyo Story" as a faint, diminished echo.'
So, we philistines can be forgiven for not finding much of interest in a movie that amounts to a "faint, diminshed echo," can't we?
Leave a comment