#191 - It Feels Like Nothing Happens
Resisting the urge to turn everything up to 11 (or even 5).
Cinemonika gives a helpful explanation of what a movie where “Nothing Happens” really is: It’s a story where things do happen, but not within a familiar story structure.
Referenced in that video, Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy fits this description. Isabel Cruz celebrates the way the films focus on conversation between Celine and Jesse, and how that creates a unique structure that helps the audience feel they know these characters deeply after watching. Rafa Boladeras highlights the pacing of the trilogy, and how the sense of watching two people in real time creates intimacy. Specifically talking about Before Midnight:
Linklater’s naturalistic style is even more accentuated here, with takes that last more than ten minutes, to make us be in the room with them, without distractions. Seeing how they love and hate each other, and go from one feeling to the next in seconds.
Another film series built around extended conversations, The Trip, plays with the conventions of comedic road movies to let its comedic leads riff and accidentally expose their true feelings. Sheila O’Malley considers how the first film in the series appears casual and quippy, but reveals a loneliness at its core. Anwen Crawford puts the Trip films into the context of Michael Winterbottom’s interest in showing time passing on screen and making boredom part of the experience:
Across a series of picturesque villages and expensive restaurants, […] the two men needle each other. Sometimes they are companionably, comfortably bored, but, just as often, they are irritated and bored, and so they compete, as professional comedians will, over the best impressions, the best put-downs, the most humiliating assessments of each other.
Paul Schrader discusses how slower films which feature inaction or delayed action instead of constant momentum play into his description of Transcendental Style. He contrasts faith-based filmmaking that is structurally and stylistically similar to commercial cinema with films that use style to express something ineffable and sacred:
One of the filmmakers Schrader references, Yasujiro Ozu, gets some attention from Richard Combs. Combs describes how Ozu’s focus on small tensions between characters is a product of a formalized aesthetic. Doruntine Aliu compiles the work of multiple critical voices to offer a deep dive into Ozu’s style.
Stillness can be a character trait, as well. There’s no shortage of things happening in The Big Lebowski, but Ryan Hollinger argues that as a main character, The Dude attempts to ride out the chaos created by others so he can stick to his low-key routine. It’s less that nothing happens, and more that nothing alters The Dude’s course all that much, or for all that long:
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⏱️ Slow down and sprint
Each week we post a comment thread for writers to meet up, cheer each other on, and put some words on the page with a Write Sprint.
What’s a Write Sprint?
John wrote up an explanation, but here’s the short version: Set a timer for 60 minutes, close down all distractions, and do nothing but write until that timer goes off.
Sometimes that’s all it takes to get some momentum going with your writing: You set aside this time for writing and nothing else, so you’d better use it!
Shout out to Doran Keil, Nirty Wa, Elyse Moretti Forbes, and Aimee Link for sprinting with us last week!
Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link Super Eyepatch Wolf tries to explain how the internet twisted Garfield from a Monday-hating cat into an Eldritch horror.
What else is inneresting?
Matt Webb considers how new technology used to seem like it was part of the Star Trek universe, but after the current vibe shift started we are now living in a future conceived by Douglas Adams.
TIL Neil Diamond, Carole Bayer Sager, and Burt Bacharach saw E.T. together in the theater, then wrote the song “Heartlight” based on the film.
Jason Hellerman sends his script to an AI coverage service and gets back over 200 dense pages of feedback telling him it’s better than Schindler’s List.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.
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