Over Analyzing Films

Only if it is induced by the weight of the crown.

Boredom is as much a tool in an artists chest as any other emotion. It can be conveyed both intentionally or unintentionally, artfully and inartfully. The monotony of it can function to heighten moments of drama or surprise. It can be used to hypnotize through repetition. It allows us moments to clearly observe what is happening on screen, even if no one particular moment necessarily feels essential.

Obviously, if your only response to a film was that it was 'boring', this would hardly lend itself to an enjoyable experience. But just because a film happens to be unafraid to play with boredom doesn't mean it should be boring to watch. Bela Tarr or Chantal Akerman have given me some of the most rewarding cinematic moments of my life, and their movies are boring by pretty much any standard definition of what should technically bore its viewer.

Here is an excerpt from a review from someone who gave a film 1/10 on IMDb:

The most boring film I've ever seen

This pretentious art-house film is well over three hours long and has very little entertaining content and not much dialogue. . . . She's far too dull for the viewer to feel anything for her.. .
. This film is so boring that I had to watch it over a period of several days.

This person is, of course, describing Jeanne Dielman.

Boring is a subjective term. Some people genuinely take value in attributes that bore or annoy others.

There are quite a few movies where the things that others criticize are what I actually find to be the film's strength. Yes, some people will dig in and talk themselves in circles trying to defend any criticism, but most of the time I think it comes from a genuine place.

But who determines when it's "enough"? What is the threshold for analyzing/over-analyzing? I mean, different people can get a whole plethora of different things out of a film (or a song, a painting, a book, a poem) and it all comes from that person's specific life experiences. As long as that analysis is legitimate and thoughtful, and presented in a respectful way, everything's game.

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I love this story from the Stalker wiki page: "On being told that Stalker should be faster and more dynamic, Tarkovsky replied: 'The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts.'"

If you pause the film at 1:49, you can clearly see a shadow with what looks like spiked ridges, almost in the shape of, YES, a crown.

Later, we see the main character resting his head on his hand, almost as if his head is heavy. We all know that saying, heavy is the head . . ..

The main character is also alive. If he is alive, he must have been born. Stay with me now. He is a grounded character, meaning he does not have the personality of someone born via Cesarean section. As we can infer a vaginal birth it means that at a certain point he was, say it with me, crowning.

I contend that he was wearing a crown the whole time!

*sweats*

It probably is the most boring movie I've seen.... I won't even dare read the reviews praising it.

But . . . . you get that being "boring" was the point, right?

Or do you imagine that Chantal Akerman wrote, filmed, and gave the thumbs up to her 3.5 hour film, and then someone was like "Hey, Chantal, parts of this movie are kind of slow and mundane . . ." and she was like "WHAT?!?!?!?!".

I think it was all a marketing gimmick.

You think that a 3.5 hour film about a housewife was a marketing gimmick?

I must know . . . for what market? People cringe when a Marvel movie crosses the 2.5 hour mark.

It's definitely not going to be for every taste and I doubt I would recommend it to anyone. But Jeanne Dielmann is probably one of the best movies I've seen.


The theory that the amount of care and craft and thought and emotion that was put into this movie was for nothing but a marketing ploy doesn't pan out from my experience. It's most likely that people have different tastes in things.

You're such an idealist.

Everyone knows that the best way to bring in that sweet, sweet box office cash is with 200 minute, slow paced domestic dramas about the mundane lives of unsatisfied housewives.

While they were gimmicky back in the late 80s

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“I really have to feel that I could make a difference in the movie, or I shouldn't be doing it.“
Joe Dante

I actually remembering arguing with Izzy years ago that it was a completely accessible movie, even if it might try a lot of people's patience. I got raked over the coals for that one.

It is totally accessible if you have an ounce of empathy in your heart.

I will admit that I was very intimidated by the runtime, but once I started the film it was immersive.

Eyes Wide Shut was Kubrick’s way of trying to make a simple film.

Marvel is 2020, Jeanne was 1975 - completely different audiences.


If there was a movie coming out tomorrow that was 5 hours long, many people would see it only because it's 5 hours long. Curiosity.



Or the gimmick could be a pretentious one. Something made so that people on message boards could talk about it 50 years later

Or, the way this story needed to be told took three and a half hours. It is a movie that is both a political and empathetic statement. Excess is the only way it would have an impact.


There are different ways to tell stories. There are different tactics to affect viewers. The fact that this one is unorthodox doesn't automatically make it a gimmick. People have written at length at how this film has made an impression on them. Gimmicks don't do that.

Exactly. The long runtime is integral to the entire point of the film, not something done as a cheap trick to get noticed.

I didn't love the film because it was 3.5 hours long. I didn't take some weird pride in having watched a 3.5 hour long movie. In fact, I am the ideal audience for this film (I enjoy slow burns, I enjoy movies outside of the mainstream, I'm interested in the political/social issues it discusses) and for years the 3.5 hour runtime was literally the only barrier to me actually sitting down and watching it.

Considering how I know literally no one who has watched this movie, and because of its slow pace and long length I would never recommend it to anyone, if this was a marketing strategy, it's a baffling one.