Cinema of slowness and cinema with slow narrative in modern cinematography

Abstract

The concept of cinema of slowness was formed only in the XXI century, but it has not developed much in recent years. Some researchers prophesize a quick death for cinema of slowness, while other film critics talk about the transition of that type of cinema to the digital space to the mass audience. However, there is confusion in the contempo- rary film sphere about the definition of cinema of slowness and its distinction from films with slow narratives. With the acceleration of time, facilitated by the incessant flow of information and the existence and popularity of shortened video formats to satisfy informational and hedonistic needs, it is increasingly difficult for viewers to hold their attention unless their attention is manipulated through, for example, additional inserts and more dynamic editing. In this case, even films from ten or twenty years ago may be perceived by modern audiences as having a stretched plot, because of different film traditions of that time, as well as a different level of technological and technical capabilities. This is confirmed by studies in which it was found that the average frame length of films is constantly shrinking. However, representatives of cinema of slowness believe that breaking the movie into shorter frames distances the action depicted on the screen from reality. This correlates with the traditions of cinematic realism, which Andre Bazin, in particular, adhered to, and also correlates with the desire of many festival filmmakers of the late XX–XXI centuries to make the image more realistic. In this vein, we can mention the representatives of the Berlin School and the proponents of the Dogma 95 manifesto. However, the desire for realism is not enough to classify the film as a movie of slowness. Important parameters are the duration of the frame, dedramatization of the narrative and other characteristics that have been identified by researchers of this direction, in particular M. Flanagan, S. Lim. Due to the fact that time and its speed is a relative concept, which is perceived and evaluated by people in different ways, so there is an erroneous attribution to the direction of cinema of slowness, for example, the films by M. Haneke, W. Wenders, as well as such recent films as “Life” (2024), “Anatomy of a Fall” (2023), “The Banshees of Inisherin” (2022), “Cairo Conspiracy” (2022), “Drive My Car” (2021) and, more surprisingly, D. Lynch’s multi-part project “Twin Peaks”. One of the newest examples of cinema of slowness is the festival film “Music” by German director Angela Schanelec, which won the award for best screenplay at the Berlinale-2023.