![]() Where Kubrick fancied narration, standard editing, and a relatively quick pace, Vinyl contains lengthy static shots that make time more obviously present. For instance, when Stanley Kubrick adapted A Clockwork Orange for the screen, he did so within the shadow of Andy Warhol’s own conceptualization of the Burgess novel Vinyl. We’ve invented this language to remark upon the creative ways artists can utilize space and time. It can “punish” the audience into a state of existential dread. ![]() If you read a detailed piece on Tarr, Hou, or Benning, you’ll likely find a discussion about how well the artist “uses” time in his films. I was awestruck when I first saw this, and I sometimes look for it on YouTube in a vain attempt to recreate my first moments with slow cinema. ![]() Tarr works with dynamic shots and bombastic scores, but his extended scenes and careful camera movements allow the frame to occupy an existence closer to a doomed moving painting. In this one shot, Tarr encompasses his thematic strengths, a perfect mixture of mundanity and profundity, Mihály Vig's haunting score slowly sucking out any hope for these townspeople. When music is combined with the spinning bar patrons, the drunken elementary science lesson becomes an alluring ballet. Jànos, the protagonist, finds himself in a sullen bar amidst a crowd of drunks and, for no immediately understandable reason, spins them around one another to make a working model of the solar system. And yet I'm consistently drawn back to the first ten minutes of Werckmeister Harmonies, a single shot that embodies what makes a director like Tarr so special. I’ve cheated on it with rapid-pace action films and the mainstream canon I avoided earlier, and I’ve learned that slowness isn’t inherently good. My flirtation with slowness has continued, but, like all relationships, it’s more complicated now.
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