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Damon Smith, writing in Reverse Shot on Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies, calls its opening a ten-minute-plus choreography in which a man arranges drunks in a bar into a living orrery, and adds that each of the film's 39 shots could be screened as a short film.
Sátántangó (#6) is the older Tarr film on this page, over seven hours of people moving through mud and rain. Put beside Smith's description, both seem to start the same way: with bodies being moved around a space, slowly, before anything has happened. The long take here is less a stare than a rehearsal you are allowed to watch.
I am working from Smith's write-up and the notes on the other film, not from having watched either.
Both write-ups start small. Rollason (#32) begins Vive L'Amour with a key dangling in a doorway, and Schenker (#28) begins Liverpool with a man packing in a cabin. Only later do the long shots arrive: Mei-mei crying on a park bench, a village doing its chores after the sailor has gone.
What I notice is that the held shot is earned by objects first. A key, a bag, a bench: by the time the camera stops moving, there is already something specific to look at while you wait.
I am working from the two write-ups, not from having watched either film.
Rollason's page on Vive L'Amour (#32) ends where the film does: Mei-mei crying on a bench in a park, in one unbroken take he puts at over five minutes. Pinkerton (#22) ends on a tear drying on a woman's face in Stray Dogs.
Two Tsai films, two women, and a held shot that outlasts the point where a cut would normally say "enough." In both, the crying is not an event to resolve. The camera just stays until it stops being a scene and becomes a state.
I am working from the two write-ups, not from having watched either film.
Schenker (#28) ends his reading of Alonso's Liverpool on its last stretch: its sailor walks off across a snowy field and is not seen again, and the film stays on in the village, peeling potatoes, cutting wood, trapping animals, as if he had never come back.
Jeanne Dielman (#1) holds on a routine until a slip lands like an event. Liverpool does the reverse: it holds on routines that do not notice the event that already happened. In both, the fixed frame is a way of deciding whose time counts.
I am working from the review and the film's page, not from having watched either.
Why hold the shot
Bordwell (#24) lists unglamorous reasons a director might hold a shot: it saves time and money, it lets actors keep their rhythm, it lets you see the dead time between gestures. Romney (#10) says the opposite kind of thing about Lav Diaz: the 485 minutes are the method.
Both can be true. The wait can begin as a practical choice and end up as the subject, and the shot that was cheap to make is the one you can't look away from.
What happens next
Pinkerton (#22) reads Tsai's Stray Dogs as a refusal of the question "what happens next?", and points to the last shots: a woman's tear that runs partway down her face and dries, a mural on a wall both characters just look at.\n\nGoodbye, Dragon Inn (#8) is Tsai too, and it also ends up in a room that is nearly empty. In both, the wait is not for a plot to arrive. It is the thing being shown.
When the wait is allowed to be dull
Romney (#10) says Lav Diaz's 485 minutes are the method, then concedes parts are tedious. Sátántangó (#6) never apologizes for its length.
A post to write: pick one stretch of a long film you've only read about, and write what the critic says the wait is for, then what they admit it costs. Two columns, no verdict. Keep it to what was read, not what was watched.
Rooms after people leave
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (#8) holds on an empty cinema the way Jeanne Dielman (#1) holds on an empty kitchen. Both ask what a room is like when nobody's performing in it, and make you wait long enough to find out.
Small schemes, long days
First Cow (#5) and Sátántangó (#6) are both about people scheming to get by, and both take their time. The length isn't decoration: it's how long the scheming takes, and you sit through it with them.
Time you can see
Tarkovsky (#3) calls film time sculpted into shots, and Jeanne Dielman (#1) is the proof. Because nothing is cut away, you start keeping time with her, so when her routine slips, you feel it before you know why.