The Falling Rain in Bela Tarr and Andrei Tarkovsky

There are few elements that, used in film, produce both sound and image at the same time. Fire--and in its form as an action event, the explosion-- and water are the two that come to mind. Light and darkness are soundless, and most sonic elements don't have a visual correlate of much use to the film-maker. Rain, raining, running, in rivers and sheets, or in hushed continuity... rain is among the film-maker's most pliant, flexible, and rewarding materials.

Not only does rain vary in tone, it falls with lesser or greater urgency. In films it can fall without wetness, as a sheet wrapping the scene in textured translucency, enhancing the image when it registers well, even though it obcures it at the same time. Indeed rain can make a scene more difficult to see, but create interest in the scene in the process. Rain might blow and create motion, running like a mad spirit first to left and then reversing and blowing suddenly to the right, across faces it has caught in its flushing wake.

When used by some, rain rains, it truly pours down, thus giving us the skies above, though we may not see them. Rain falls, in drops descending as they are bound by the earth to do, and rarely do we see an upward gushing, for rainfall falls for a reason, and that reason is the reason the film-maker welcomes the rain.

Rain is melancholic but not sad, it is usually cold, wet, and uncomfortable, but in film it has no temperature and becomes moving image, an element as pure as any made for film. Rivers flow, but we cannot film flowing rivers and be in them as we are in a scene shot in the rain.


Rain is time, rain is the reign of time, in rain it is time that rains. But as times are different in film, so too are rains. Tarkovsky's rain is a rain-event, rain falling, in light and shadow, rain as sculpture, as a column of rain falling through a hole in the ceiling of a room. Rain in Tarr is a sentimental field, a wash of mood, used to wipe the lens and the eye and to perpetuate a sentiment even and in spite of action developing within it. Rain in Tarkovsky is isolated, contained, unless it is really raining outside. Rain in Tarr reaches from edge to soaked edge, containing but not contained, as unbroken a field as light itself, a visual plane or surface, where Tarkovsky's rains are perhaps more like thin waterfalls and magical moments.

Rain is sublime, it arouses thought, and yet in many ways it suggests nothing, nothing it all.

Purpose and style

In the 1920s, after Germany's downfall in the First World War, a new cinematic style of reflexing reality is formed (before that - in painting, literature, theatre), namely expressionism. It's a natural consequence of a drastically changing socio-historical situation. Deformed scenery, prolonged shadows, dark figures, lurking actors. With its exclusive style expressionist cinema is born out of a necessity and solid purpose - to criticise the political moment and protest against the horror of war and its consequences. It's a predominantly social tendency - emerged from its conscious and developed by the faith in its better future.

In the 1940s, after the Axis Powers' downfall in the Second World War, a new cinematic style emerges in response to the events that shaked Italy: war, fascism, the struggle towards a democratic society. Thus neo-realism is born in Italy. Again socially orientated, it supports a political view - that of the anti-fascist opposition, this time directly mirroring reality to evoke admiration for the struggling man, "the little man", the man of the people.

In the 1950s, during a hard crisis in the French cinema, an enthusiastic group of film critics and directors agitates towards sculpting cinema as art and rejecting the current trade film. It carries a stylistic message - to reshape cinema until it becomes "as flexible, as sophisticated as the written language". It is born out of an aesthetic stagnation and its main purpose is its elimination.

Every new wave is provoked by an event (be it social, political, aesthetic, etc.) that defines its purpose. And that purpose is justified and approached with the help of a certain correspondent style. Harry spotted the signals of the CC style, its aesthetics. Consequently, these signals became a set of "minimal profile", a solid base. But still, can we say what is the purpose?

Judging from all the discussions, I'd assume CC doesn't astonish with plot, nor with acting. It doesn't concern or criticise social policies, it's not politically engaged. It's narrative structures range in minimum scale. It reacts by visual language. It provokes the viewing experience. It chalanges the audience to indulge in a new way of understanding cinema, of looking it.

As we had the chance to observe, many films fall into the CC style category, but most of them seem to differ somehow - how? I guess, they don't share the same purpose - rendering the way we experience cinema, our attitude. Most of the films that seem to be out of place have a different primal goal, which can be found in their use of narrativity or the visual language, or music. So could we say that CC's purpose is aesthetic, or rather aesthetically social since it is aimed directly towards the audience?

During the 80s, 90s and 00s, the blockbuster gains force. It floods the whole world and results in a situation similar to that prior to the New Wave. Around the same time, though, another style can be spotted in Asia - a minimalistic in every sense aesthetic with a sometimes vague goal. What do you think of CC's purpose? If we find it out, probably we could differentiate contemplative films better.

Note: During the 80s and 90s, the so called Asian Horror emerges, too. Could it be accepted as a contrary reaction to CC? Or are they a reaction to the same "event" but in two radical ways?

Roundtable 4 : Transcendental Style or CC?

Many claim that the trend we're talking about here is exactly what Paul Schrader theorized in "Transcendental style in film : Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer" (1972). Please discuss how his (34 years old) model may or may not suit the minimalist films made since, how do these masters from one or two generations back compare to the recent generation? Would this theory be the inspiration for the filmmakers of our trend to develop a new form of cinema? Is it a continuation, an extension, an emulation or a leap forward, a rupture?

Roundtable topic inspired by Tyler at Criterionforum :

Although this strikes me as a similar classification to the transcendental film idea, in this case, the argument is for a proposed model for what would be one of the major movements taking place in world cinema in the last 25-30 years, especially in the last 10 or 15.

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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.


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