In over a half century of movie-going, I don't recall ever seeing a film like this. Whether you love it or hate it--I loved it--depends entirely on individual tastes. So I could fully understand someone rating it as either a 10 or a 1, or anywhere in between.
The films happenings, or lack thereof, have been adequately described by other reviewers, so I won't go into that here. This is a film in which very little happens, but at the same time everything happens. It is elegiac, and a spirit of sadness and melancholy pervade the film. Many reviewers have criticized the length of some of the takes. A handicapped young woman who appears to have a brace on her leg--we can't see it, but we can hear it--climbs a long flight of stairs with excruciating slowness. The camera watches her from a distance as she climbs every step, with a 'clunk' every time her foot lands on a step. It sounds boring but it's ingenious. How better to empathize with this woman, to realize with a shock what an excruciating grind her daily life must be, and how lonely she must be. Indeed, everyone in the film appears to be lonely, and each has mechanisms for staving it off. Going to the movies is one of them.
One much-discussed scene has the camera, apparently from the vantage point of the screen, look out at the completely empty theater for what is probably three or four minutes. Absolutely nothing happens. But this scene is the essence of the film. It seems to be saying, "look at the history here. Look at how many thousands of people have come here to watch the movies, how many were made happy, if only for a couple of hours. And now it will be gone." We know in our gut that the theater will probably be torn down and replaced with a soulless mall, or a parking lot.
I'm sure this film brought back memories for people of a certain age. I remember as a child in the 1950s going to theaters very much like this one, paying 9 cents for admission, buying some popcorn and soda, and watching westerns or films noirs. And now those theaters, like the one in this film, are long since gone. Does anyone remember Jean Luc Godard in the 1960s talking about "cinema language?" A film like this one exemplifies perfectly what he must have meant. 9/10
The films happenings, or lack thereof, have been adequately described by other reviewers, so I won't go into that here. This is a film in which very little happens, but at the same time everything happens. It is elegiac, and a spirit of sadness and melancholy pervade the film. Many reviewers have criticized the length of some of the takes. A handicapped young woman who appears to have a brace on her leg--we can't see it, but we can hear it--climbs a long flight of stairs with excruciating slowness. The camera watches her from a distance as she climbs every step, with a 'clunk' every time her foot lands on a step. It sounds boring but it's ingenious. How better to empathize with this woman, to realize with a shock what an excruciating grind her daily life must be, and how lonely she must be. Indeed, everyone in the film appears to be lonely, and each has mechanisms for staving it off. Going to the movies is one of them.
One much-discussed scene has the camera, apparently from the vantage point of the screen, look out at the completely empty theater for what is probably three or four minutes. Absolutely nothing happens. But this scene is the essence of the film. It seems to be saying, "look at the history here. Look at how many thousands of people have come here to watch the movies, how many were made happy, if only for a couple of hours. And now it will be gone." We know in our gut that the theater will probably be torn down and replaced with a soulless mall, or a parking lot.
I'm sure this film brought back memories for people of a certain age. I remember as a child in the 1950s going to theaters very much like this one, paying 9 cents for admission, buying some popcorn and soda, and watching westerns or films noirs. And now those theaters, like the one in this film, are long since gone. Does anyone remember Jean Luc Godard in the 1960s talking about "cinema language?" A film like this one exemplifies perfectly what he must have meant. 9/10