I was absent from this week’s class on Thursday, but after looking through the readings and lecture slides, I’ve had a few thoughts spring to mind ~

Thinking about movement, ‘In the Mood for Love’ was definitely a more engaging film for me, and not only because it wasn’t as lengthy as L’Aventura, but it was the use of movement that did it – as Dan said, the film is like a dance. I have an appreciation for the still image, but ITMFL moved so continuously across the nooks and crannies and doors of the apartment that it gave a kind of voyeuristic feeling – like the audience is moving along in the scene as the characters are.

‘Toward a new aesthetic’ was a tough reading this week, but what interested me was the example of the scene from ‘The Matrix’ as an example of moving through bullet time by splicing images together. It messes around with the temporal qualities to establish the narrative timing rather than real time. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this, but I didn’t previously considering how movement affects perception of time and how it can be manipulated to change perception. In the opening scene of ITMFL, it seems like framing the show within these narrow hallways/door frames and then using the continuous editing gives off this atmosphere that everything and everyone is moving at a quicker pace, whereas in The Matrix, movement is manipulated to seem lengthy and slowed down so as to give off a computerised/non human look of the characters. I’m not sure if this is making sense, but I’m looking to explore more of this talk about movement in my essay this week – hopefully I will get the hold of the movement then! However, the point being that this examples of movement in the frame are helping me to understand how temporal qualities are effected.

References 

Bruce Isaacs, ‘The Ontology of Bullet-Time’, In Towards a New Film Aesthetic(2008), Continuum, pp. 142-147.