Disclaimer

That CC is a new artistic movement, and not the continuation/revival of an older one, is merely a GAMEPLAY (not a scholar study) to entertain this blogathon, which original goal is to just talk about the contemplative traits in cinema that can make certain people feel "boredom". Thus we just intend to defend challenging films against the accusation of being boring. So this covers a great range of films. That's why the discussions might sound a little confusing. Now if we can make sense of this trend all the better.

"Contemplative Cinema" is an improper nickname chosen out of convenience since we don't have an appropriate name yet. We could as well call it "Neo-Minimalism", "Neo-Silent", "Mundane drift", "Unspoken Cinema", "Non-narrativism", "Atmospherical films", "Body Language mise-en-scene", "visual dialog"... what have you. Let's just refer to it as CC, without bothering about the actual implication of the adjective "contemplative". This trend is not defined by an adjective, but from the outside-in, by certain like-minded films, by concentric circles narrowing it down finer and purer as we move on.

CC is not what is commonly refered to in the USA as "Boring Art films" which includes all and any serious films d'auteur, or in foreign language, without any aesthetical coherence. So "Boring art film" was the joke that started this blogathon, but shall not be refered to as a model.

The tentative 4 criteria set out in my Minimum Profile are my sole responsability, and are not meant to be definite either. They are a framework to help disambiguate the films that pop in the conversation. It a sketched out reference, but a work-in-progress. Also they do not pretend to be the aesthetical characteristics of our undefinied trend. They are used for profiling candidates to the trend from a formal outline, the quintessence that will eventually cement the selected films together will come later.Now if other people find interest in this investigation and want to explore other leads, you can define the trend any way suits you better.

Why CC is not a continuation of an older trend?

Well that's what I'd like to investigate. I contend that our most recent generation of contemplative auteurs deal with narration in a very different way than in the Modernism era. I see a clash, a rupture and that's why I don't consider them followers but innovators. They may not revolution every aspects of filmmaking, but a few things that their prcursors didn't do before them. These distinctions are mainly (and speculatively so far) the riddance of any narrative drive to build the purpose of a film. That's why it is almost impossible to sum up the "story" they contain. Consequantly/simultaneously the riddance of expository dialogs to walk the audience through the scenes, and dialogs altogether. I don't think Modernists could do that back then...

(Technical) Minimum Profile

The original purpose of this blogathon was to discuss how filmmakers can make a film without a plot, without dialogue, without action, without editing conventions, without stars... and still produce a moving atmosphere transcending narration and touching the audience intuitively without resort to intellectual verbalisation of facts and psychology. So the point of these films is not to tell us a story, but to paint a "state of mind".
This idea came from a few auteurs who seem to follow this path in total contradiction to the narrative cinema tradition, to me they represent the epitome of "contemplation" since only images are left to hold the film together : Bela Tarr, Tsai Ming-liang, Bruno Dumont, Weerasethakul, Sharunas Bartas, Kore-eda, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Sokurov, Lisandro Alonso, Carlos Reygadas, Pedro Costa. So they are the ones I'd like to focus on primarily. There are also individual films by other auteurs that fit this profile perfectly without being a consistent trademark.
The discussions have been really exciting so far, but I'll ignore the "contemplation" argument for now, and instead concentrate on these 4 criteria (technical descriptors) :

1. PLOTLESSNESS : no obvious (forefront) drama, no beginning, no denouement, open-ending, no drive to go forward, no major narrative gimmicks (flashback, multilayered stories), simplicity, atmospherical depiction, distanciation of protagonist(s) with background action, no imminent threat, no external forces pressuring the protagonist(s).
2. WORDLESSNESS : laconical interactions (or silent protagonist), no plot-drive expository filling, no psychological arguments, no voiceover, direct-sound (no score), body language.
3. SLOWNESS : long takes, static shots/slow camerawork, patient pace, uneventfulness (down time), "unnecessary" mundanity, uncut movements, activities filmed in their entirety, extended wait/pauses, conscience of time.
4. ALIENATION : disconnectedness, wandering/idleness/listlessness, solitude, fatalism, ennui/melancholy/depression, non-conformity, no intellectualized existentialism, distanciation of protagonist(s) with the world, with other characters, emptiness, empty frames, distanciation of the camera from the subject.

I know the list of "contemplative films" stretches long and vague on the chronology page, which makes the family identity more difficult to pin point. So, from what I've watched firsthand, I only keep 34 films with the most representative profile, less compromising narration-wise, according to my understanding of the style we're talking about here :
Damnation; The Seventh Continent; A scene at the sea; D'Est; Satantango; Vive l'Amour; Few of Us; The River; Mother and Son; L'Humanité; Werckmeister harmóniák; Millennium Mambo; What time is it over there?; Blissfully Yours; Dolls; Hukkle; Japon; Uzak/Distant; The Brown Bunny; Elephant; Goodbye, Dragon Inn; Nobody Knows; Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring; La Blessure; Los Muertos; Tropical Malady; The World; Batalla en el cielo; Last Days; Seven Invisible Men; The Sun; Colossal Youth; Fantasma; Flandres.
For these I'm sure the proposed profile fits, so I use them as models of reference to define this "family". And I'd like to compare them and see how each film overcomes the 4 "constraints" (which are not creative limitation self-imposed by the auteurs). I'd also like to figure statistical occurrences in these films to see if these protagonists share similar concerns, and their auteur a common vision of the world.
Of course, this is my own humble interpretations of the topic. Everyone is free to disagree, argue, and propose a different profile, or continue to explore contemplation in narrative cinema. All this can be developped on this blog at the same time and inter-communicate, this is the value of a collegial workshop.


Related:

• Starting from basics all over again 

Contemplating Babel in many tongues and voices

Gun barrels and bullets may be a blast to many American film-makers, but "foreign film-makers" find them to be riddled with cliche and only limited opportunities. At least how the story goes, or is often told. But Inarritu's Golden Globe success with Babel tells a different story, in other tongues, putting gun barrels and bullets to service as a means opening up the field rather than setting it off to run its natural course.

Guns, of course, are an excellent match for film. They execute story lines and create action at the same time. When fired, a bullet may drop a man whose pursuit has held the audience in strangely -posed pauses, popcorn so ever close to the mouth, but not yet in, because the logic of the Western, like the logic of popcorn, requires that the bad man drop before the rest of us can enjoy our (now doubly pleasurable for having acquired a guilty complicity) popcorn; the popcorn itself a strangely historic nod to the genre, what with tall stalks of corn on fields, sunlit and fertile, a field of dreams if not days of heaven, the success story of a civilized and settled western territory but for the ominous threshing promised by an off-screen and future reaper... a grim reminder that the children of the corn may eat now, but pop tomorrow... Popcorn placed into mouths, and it's never just one but it must be several, enough that there are stakes involved each time, enough that simply attempting to get it into our mouths while anticipating, like the rest of the crowded theater, the pop of the gun, and the bad man's fall, that will release own own trigger elbow so that we and numerous others might unleash a hail of falling kernels and puffy targets made.

Gun barrels and bullets might double up action, even involve the audience directly in the production of entertainment from something horrible and terrifying (namely the threat of bad men, and death). But there is more, of course, to the genre than just lock n load (though it is true that this statement may not always apply).

Guns and bullets may execute justice, but they don't make its case. Guns make sense if fired at the right person, for the right reason. A bad man dropped creates a relief in tension only if we know the bad man is a bad man, that he has done bad things, and that the man who shoots him is the right man for the job. In fact, we prefer to let our criminals escape from jail in order that we can see them hunted down and finally killed by the men they pissed off in the first place; we prefer that even to the courtroom drama of preparatory statements, lawyers interrupted mid-sentence and mid-stride by objections launched from on high, judges and juries, a reflection of the intrinsic freedom invested in the political system so uniquely rendered in examples of democracy such as American Idol and captured occasionally on CSpan, again poised and ready to utter that phrase whose terminal authority becomes a release with the simple addition of the prefix "Not"...

Guilt and guns, it is, perhaps, more than it is bullets and guns. Or they might all share a connecting line, and a trajectory if you will: righting a wrong, rendering justice. Without guilt, there is no morality (suggested); without morality, no moral. Guilt creates the possibility of justice, justice, the possibility of the holster (enforcement).

This cinematic field is strong and will always be strong, for its logic is as simple as it gets, and clear at the same time. The crime is defined by the social body against which it is committed, which by Biblical reasoning is entitled to demand justice, if not also mete out a bit of punishment, too. Contemporary action films still have the western embedded within them, borrowing and extending the chilling, thrilling and the harrowing, not unlike the journalistic practice as deployed during wartime military campaigns (notably during the campaign bits, less so during the clear, hold, and gradually lose control bits). These days we still have guys with rifles on rooftops overlooking main street, checking the time, and waiting for the two men mortally and philosophically, if not also morally opposed, to face off against one another. These days men on rooftops tend to offer numerous additional Guns n Ammo product placement opportunities, what with the varieties of caliber, sights, infra-red targeting (did you know those beams show up if you're using night vision goggles, while the poor target has no idea his torso has become a momentary display of sol et lumiere dancing spots of red light, fireworks of course imminent...), but this is just a cliche'd way of layering the Western with technical progress (an achievement in its own right, for the Western chapter of American history was brought to a close by the arrival of industry and practitioners of the law).

Inarritu, in Babel, was aware of all of this, though he may not have thought about it in this way. His stripped-down, high caliber gun is a Soviet issue commonly used to execute territorial justice in the highlands of Central Asian republics. In this case it is fired, however, for no good reason, and at nobody in particular. The violence has no logic. It is in fact illogical, for it is arbitrary. This is Inarritu's style, and it's a style common to relational films—films in which social relations are thematized by or through random acts of senseless violence, beauty, or both. Crash, too, and Hustle and Flow, not to mention Capote, each used this theme. So, too, have Michael Haneke's films (though not always involving gun barrels and bullets); the Dardenne brothers, Gus Van Sant's Elephant, and countless other films which, for the past ten or fifteen years, have produced a genre of relational film along many different lines and variations.

Inarritu, in Babel, plays with the notion of causality by pursuing the question of the gun's owner, and that owner's personal story, in an attempt to pose the Why question (which must be addressed because the violence has no proximate cause). He suggests in this way that in an interdependent world, local violence may have global causes and consequences. Arms trade is of course the topic here, though presented without the apparatus of gun runners, organized crime, internationalized detective work, and so on (that would be Bond). But as we know, it's not just guns that kill people. So a social logic appears, organizing relations among those involved through choices and acts that are good or bad, right, and wrong (the bus passengers, the embassy, the families, the press), and the reaction shots to the random (gun)shot now appear against backdrops that each provide their own degree of sense and organization. For what is or would be the correct thing to do, if as is the case in the film, we must have some compassion for those who committed the accidental crime? What do we do, what is the right thing to choose, what is the appropriate response or retaliation, if conditions themselves pulled the trigger, if the shot fired was a social shot, not a bad man's shot? If the gun belonged neither to the cops regime nor the robbers regime, but to an animal hunter's regime? If we cannot use the logic of the gun because it was not that kind of gun, not that kind of shot, is the violence it has started a violence we can reverse?

Films about social relations work by destabilizing fields in which simple cliches of justice, punishment, retribution, pursuit, and so on must be reassembled by acts of a different order. In Crash it was personal redemption by act of kindness (thus healing the social). In Capote, an author investigating a terrible and senseless crime repeats the crime by sending his man to the gallows (for the sake of good writing). In Cache, the threat of violence against a French television personality recalls a forgotten crime against Algerians, redoubled in a family's own complicitness, and explicated by personal forgetting, rage, and resentment. And there are numerous others.

Films are set up around a shot and reaction shot. The question of a response, which is to say the organization of a cinematic narrative, depends on the intentions and motives of the opening shot/shooter. Babel, though it risks losing its connecting threads at times, successfully raises the question and then presents an even more compelling response, by suggesting, I think, that it's not just in making sense of the shot fired, but in making sense through one's response, that society, if not humanity, might still have a shot at its own redemption.

--Adrian Chan

Average Shot Length

ASL (Average Shot Length) indicates the average duration of a shot between cuts in a film (total film run time divided by number of shots). It's a data used to compare films from their editing style : how often do they cut, how long do the shots last. A long ASL means the film uses, on average, longer shots and fewer cuts.
Comprehensive example of ASL calculation (at OffScreen) : Bresson's Pickpocket (1959) ASL = 10"

"In my book, THE WAY HOLLYWOOD TELLS IT, I try to show that the acceleration of cutting in recent decades can be seen as moving from an ASL range of 8-11 seconds before 1960 and towards a range of 4-6 seconds in recent years." David Bordwell

For reference, in an overview of the Cinemetrics general database (all types of films) Yuri Tsivian notes:

"the fastest film made between 1902 and 1909 has an ASL of 15.8 seconds while the slowest one made between 2000 and 2006 has an ASL of 10.01 seconds. In other words, the fastest runner in the beginning-of-the-past-century group is 5.7 seconds behind the slowest one of the twenty-first century."

But films that would fit our profile of Contemplative Cinema are underrepresented in this sample. I add Satantango (as calculated by Bordwell)

Did I say minimalism? The film consists, by my on-the-fly count, of 172 shots including the chapter titles), across 434 minutes (not counting the final credits). That creates an Average Shot Length of about two and a half minutes. Quite a comparison with contemporary American cinema! Still, people who’ve actually seen the film probably expect the average to be much longer. (Angelopoulos’ The Hunters averages well over three minutes per shot.) Some shots of course run for many minutes, but others are fairly brief. Bordwell blog

Let's take a look at some ASL numbers for various Silent Films and Contemplative Cinema (in a broad sense) [EDIT: see graphs here] :

"CONTEMPLATIVE CINEMA" (since 80-90ies)

• Russian Ark (2002/Sokurov) ASL= 96'
• Macbeth (1982/Tarr) ASL= 31.5'
• Five (2005/Kiarostami) ASL= 14'45"
• Autohystoria (2008/Martin) ASL= 5'37" (17 shots in 91')
  
• 13 Lakes (2004/Benning) ASL= 5'02" (25 shots in 126')
  
• The Man From London (2007/Tarr) ASL= 4'24"
  
• Werckmeister Harmonies (2000/Tarr) ASL= 3'48"
• Hamaca Paraguaya (2006/Encina) ASL= 2'40"
• Satantango (1994/Tarr) ASL= 2'33"
• Damnation (1987/Tarr) ASL= 2' (57 shots in 111')
  
• Eternity And a Day (1998/Angelopoulos) ASL= 1'54"
• Ulysses' Gaze (1995/Angelopoulos) ASL= 1'46"
• Woman is the Future of Man (2004/Hong Sang-soo) ASL= 1'39"
  
• Fantasma (2006/Alonso) ASL= 1'28" (43 shots in 63')
  
• Landscape in the mist (1988/Angelopoulos) ASL= 1'26"
• Like You Know It All (2009/Hong sang-soo) ASL= 1'18" (95 shots in 123')
  
• Unknown Pleasures (2002/Jia Zhang Ke) ASL= 1'17"
• Liverpool (2008/Alonso) ASL= 1'14" (68 shots in 84')
• Woman on the Beach (2006/Hong Sang-soo) ASL= 1'11"
  
• La Libertad (2001/Alonso) ASL= 1'10" (63 shots in 73')
  
• The Skywalk is Gone (2002/Tsai Ming-liang) ASL= 1'09"
  
• Stalker (1979/Tarkovsky) ASL= 1'08"
• In Public (2001/Jia Zhang-ke) ASL= 1'08"
• Platform (2000/Jia Zhang-ke) ASL= 1'08"
• Café Lumiére (2003/HHH) ASL= 1'07"
  
• 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994/Haneke) ASL= 1'07"
• Gerry (2001/Van Sant) ASL= 1'05"
• Tale of Cinema (2005/Hong Sang-soo) ASL= 1'04"
  
• Afternoon Times (2005/Boonsinsukh) ASL= 1'02"
• Los Muertos (2004/Alonso) ASL= 59.3" (77 shots in 78')
• Dealer (2004/Fliegauf) ASL= 66.2" (118 shots in 130')
  
• Turning Gate (2002/Hong Sang-soo) ASL= 58"
  
• The World (2004/Jia Zhang-ke) ASL= 57"
• The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000/Hong Sang-soo) ASL= 53"
  
• Jeanne Dielman (1975/Akerman) ASL= 51.4" (223 shots in 191')
  
• Prefab People (1982/Tarr) ASL= 47"
• Few of Us (1996/Bartas) ASL= 38.5" (148 shots in 105')
  
• Our Daily Bread (2005/Geyrhalter) ASL= 38.2"
• Honor de cavalleria (2006/Serra) ASL= 35.7"
• Stellet Licht (2007/Reygadas) ASL= 35.1"
  
• The Wayward Cloud (2004/Tsai Ming-liang) ASL= 34.6"
• The Outsider (1981/Tarr) ASL= 33.5"
• The Power of Kangwon Province (1998/Hong Sang-soo) ASL= 33"
• Freedom (2000/Bartas) ASL= 32.9" (169 shots in 96')
  
• Family Nest (1979/Tarr) ASL= 32"
• Three Times (2005/HHH) ASL= 29.5"
• The Corridor (1994/Bartas) ASL= 27.9" (177 shots in 85')
  
• Oasis (2002/Lee Chang-dong) ASL= 26.5"
  
• The Outlaw Son (2006/Lowery) ASL= 26"
• The Day a Pig Fell in the Well (1996/Hong Sang-soo) ASL= 24"
  
• Drifting Clouds (1996/Kaurismäki) ASL= 21.5"
  
• Three Days (1991/Bartas) ASL= 20.9" (219 shots in 75')
  
• Twentynine Palms (2003/Dumont) ASL= 20.9"
• The Banishment (2007/Zvyagintsev) ASL= 19.7"
  
• The Brown Bunny (2003/Gallo) ASL= 17.9"
• Elephant (1989/Clarke) ASL= ~17.8"
• Old Joy (2005/Reichardt) ASL= 16.9"
• Tony Takitani (2004/Jun Ichikawa) ASL= 15.3"
• L'Humanité (1999/Dumont) ASL= 12.9"
• In The Mood For Love (2001/Wong Kar-wai) ASL= 12.4"
• Ariel (1988/Kaurismäki) ASL= 12.2"
• Sous le Sable (2000/Ozon) ASL= 12.2"
• The Man without a past (2002/Kaurismäki) ASL= 11.7"
  
• Before Sunset (2004/Linklater) ASL= 10.1"
• Shadows in paradise (1986/Kaurismäki) ASL= 9.5"
• The Straight Story (1999/Lynch) ASL= 8.6"
  
• 2046 (2004/Wong Kar-wai) ASL= 8.9"
• Chungking Express (1994/Wong Kar-wai) ASL= 8.6"
• As Tears Go By (1988/Wong Kar-wai) ASL= 7.2"
• 3-iron (2004/Kim Ki-duk) ASL= 7.1"
• Spring, summer, fall, winter and spring (2003/Kim Ki-duk) ASL= 6.9"
• The Idiots / Idioterne (1998/von Trier) ASL= 6.9"
  

MODERN PRECURSORS (before 1990-80)

• Almanac of Fall (1985/Tarr) ASL= 57" (115 shots in 120')
  
• La Signora senza camelie (1953/Antonioni) ASL= 55.6"
• The Prefab People (1982/Tarr) ASL= 46" (82 shots in 105')
• Andrey Rublyov (1971/Tarkovsky) ASL= 34.1"
• The Outsider (1981/Tarr) ASL= 31" (121 shots in 234')
• Le Amiche (1955/Antonioni) ASL= 26.7"
• Mirror, The (1974/Tarkovsky) ASL= 23.2"
• Il Grido (1957/Antonioni) ASL= 20.2"
• The Passenger (1975/Antonioni) ASL= 18.6"
• Ivan's Childhood (1962/Tarkovsky) ASL= 17.9"
• L'Avventura (1960/Antonioni) ASL= 17.7"
• Death in Venice (1971/Visconti) ASL=17.4"
  
• Husbands (1970/Cassavetes) ASL= 16"
• La Notte (1961/Antonioni) ASL= 15.8"
• Diary of a Country Priest (1950/Bresson) ASL= 15.6"
• There was a father (1942/Ozu) ASL= 14.8"
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968/Kubrick) ASL=13"
  
• Paris, Texas (1984/Wenders) ASL=12.4"
  
• A Woman Under the Influence (1974/Cassavetes) ASL= 12.1"
• L'Eclisse (1962/Antonioni) ASL= 11.9"
• Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972/Herzog) ASL= 11.8"
• Tokyo Story (1953/Ozu) ASL= 10.2"
• Il Deserto Rosso (1964/Antonioni) ASL= 10.1"
• Faces (1968/Cassavetes) ASL= 8.7"
• Zabriskie Point (1970/Antonioni) ASL= 8.3"
• El Topo (1970/Jodorowski) ASL= 7.9"
• Lancelot du Lac (1974/Bresson) ASL= 7.5"
• Floating Weeds (1959/Ozu) ASL= 7.4"
• Bicycle Thieves (1948/De Sica) ASL= 7.2"
• Shadows (1959/Cassavetes) ASL= 7.1"
• Good Morning (1959/Ozu) ASL= 7"
• Nuit et brouillard (1955/Resnais) ASL= 5.9"
• Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (1971/Brakhage) ASL= 4.6"
• The Seasons (1975/Peleshian) ASL= 0.53"
  

NARRATIVE SILENT FILMS (for comparison)

• After Death (1915/Bauer) ASL= 21.2"
• Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. (1919/Wiene) ASL= 10.7"
• Sunrise (1927/Murnau) ASL= 9.4"
• Vampyr (1932/Dreyer) ASL= 8.8"
• Frankenstein (1931/Whale) ASL= 8.6"
• Faust (1926/Murnau) ASL= 7.9"
• Nosferatu (1922/Murnau) ASL= 7.8"
• People on Sunday (1930/Siodmak) ASL= 5.2"
• A Story of Floating Weeds (1934/ozu) ASL= 4.6"
• An Inn in Tokyo (1935/Ozu) ASL= 4.5"
• I was born, but... (1932/Ozu) ASL= 4"
• Strike (1925/Eisenstein) ASL= 3"

Roundtable 3 : Aesthetic economy

The team-blog seems to be working now. Everyone should be able to post content here in new posts. And I encourage everyone to do so. You can re-post your contributions here for archive purpose. And you can create new topics, new roundtables, new activities as you wish.

So I'm taking this opportunity to post a new Roundtable, continuing to explore the nature of this trend we're trying to define here. The main criterion to me is the form it takes, in particular clashing with the narrative tradition. These films coming from various corners of the globe seem to share at least a common concern for visual minimalism, a passive, uneventful (non-plot-driven) non-narration, and laconical dialogue.

Let's talk here about the formal characteristics of these films, the specific visual language developped by their auteurs and the new intuitive "conventions" they had to invent to replace dialectic plot and overstated montage.

As suggested in weepingsam latest post : Defining Contemplative Cinema (Bela Tarr)

"They (or we, since I can see it too) notice that there are films with certain characteristics - slowness, plotlessness, etc. They are looking for what links these films, how they can describe them, how they can describe the links. The problem so far (for me) is that the links are too vague - the category is too broad."

These roundtables are opportunities to link to the contributions already posted where this question was developped, threading a web of interactive discussions and summing up a synthesis here together. Subscribe to the RSS feed for activity notification from this Roundtable.