11: Béla Tarr & Judd Apatow
Kathleen Norris on I LEARN BY NEGATIVES
I sometimes think that God means for me to sit through long and excruciatingly tedious films so that others won’t have to. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make, as I learn so much from these movies, even the most slow-paced and boring.
When I was in my twenties and living in New York City I often spent Saturdays going to one film after another. When I lived around the corner from the New Yorker theater, I was able to see dazzling Busby Berkeley musicals and somber masterpieces like Au Hasard Balthazar and On The Waterfront on a big screen. But often I zipped all over Manhattan on the subway for movies that sounded interesting. Watching Antonioni’s L’Avventura as the beautiful Italians with imposing cheekbones kept looking for a missing woman I felt as frustrated and annoyed as if I were searching for a lost object, returning to the same places over and over without success. No film had ever affected me like this, and I was so fascinated by the director’s ability to irritate me that I sat through it a second time. I knew then I was a total goner.
I suspect that my tolerance comes from trying to respect the vision of another artist: if Chantal Akerman needs to show me every detail of a woman’s daily routines in Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels, she has her reasons. By imposing on me all the day-to-day repetitions that this woman engages in, Akerman builds a claustrophobic atmosphere of despair and anxiety. I come to worry for this woman, who is attempting to cope with her husband’s death by repressing any sign of grief. You know it won’t end well. This is one of the saddest films I’ve ever seen, but I’m glad I saw it.
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