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Good films where nothing really happens

Started by billyandthecloneasaurus, December 24, 2018, 06:24:02 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Sebastian Cobb

I really didn't like ND, thought it was purposefully try-hard esoteric wank.

Catalogue Trousers

Clerks. A bunch of mates prat about in a shop. The End.

hummingofevil

Straight Story? Guy just drives a tractor for a couple of hours.
Vanishing Point? Same but a it's a car and for different reasons.
Fitzcaraldo? They shift a boat over a hill.
Gummo? Nothing's happened there for generations.
Erasurehead? Couldn't tell you if anything happens or not.
2001? Stuff happens eventually but it takes ages.
My Neighbour Totoro? Kids fuck about with ghosts in a forest.




hummingofevil

What was that movie? The Weeping Camel? Mongolians waiting for a camel to give birth or give milk to its baby? Well the camel gives birth or it's baby needs milk but that hardly enough to fill 90mins but for what I remember I loved that film. There is even a bit where they all laugh at farts.

madhair60


checkoutgirl

Quote from: Catalogue Trousers on December 26, 2018, 09:03:40 PM
Clerks. A bunch of mates prat about in a shop. The End.

No. They play hockey, go to a funeral and find a dead body.

checkoutgirl

Leviathan. Literally 1.5 hours of the noise of a fishing boat at sea and a dark formless visual. I loathed it obviously but it got some good reviews.

Not to be confused with the fun Peter Weller thriller from the 80s.

Sebastian Cobb

Paris, Texas? The guy doesn't even speak for the first half an hour.

St_Eddie

Quote from: hummingofevil on December 27, 2018, 02:32:30 AM
My Neighbour Totoro? Kids fuck about with ghosts in a forest.

On that Miyazaki related note; Kiki's Delivery Service.  A film I really like but all I can really recall from the plot is Kiki having to deliver a pie to a woman.

PlanktonSideburns

Quote from: St_Eddie on December 27, 2018, 02:00:38 PM
On that Miyazaki related note; Kiki's Delivery Service.  A film I really like but all I can really recall from the plot is Kiki having to deliver a pie to a woman.

that sounds great! what kind of pie? wait dont tell me, itll spoil it.


St_Eddie

Quote from: PlanktonSideburns on December 28, 2018, 12:07:01 AM
that sounds great! what kind of pie? wait dont tell me, itll spoil it.

I shaln't spoil the pie related plot pot but watch the film!  Guess the pie!  No, seriously, it's a great film and the pie is merely a bonus.  A delicious bonus.

PlanktonSideburns

jokes aside- love slow films, so will get it down me!


RDRR


Shit Good Nose

Winter's Bone.  Feels like something major is about to happen at several points, but it never does.  Great film.

daf

#46
That Derek Jarman film where the screen's just blue - unless there's a totally black & silent film*, I don't think anything's gonna top that for "nothing really happening"

I think I saw this on the big screen back in 1993 - I used to faint in the cinema quite a lot due to low blood pressure and massive swirling screen movements punching me right in the bread basket. On a few occasions falling flat on my face as I staggered up the isle to be sick** - so this was a nice relaxing break from the carnage.

Absolutely no recollection of any actual "plot" - just a lot of lovely blue.

- - - - -
* Surely some "artist" MUST have done this brrrriliant idea - Warhol, possibly?

- - - - -
** Jacob's Ladder, Freejack, The Lawnmower Man - all the classics!

greenman

Quote from: St_Eddie on December 27, 2018, 02:00:38 PM
On that Miyazaki related note; Kiki's Delivery Service.  A film I really like but all I can really recall from the plot is Kiki having to deliver a pie to a woman.

Miyazaki  from that era(post Laputa, pre Mononoke) I'd say tended to make the details of most the plotting pretty inconsequential to the real story of the film. I mean a good deal happens in Porco Rosso with the sky pirates but really its a slow character study in which not a great deal happens.

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on December 31, 2018, 02:22:06 PM
Winter's Bone.  Feels like something major is about to happen at several points, but it never does.  Great film.

Great shout. The world created feels so lived-in and realistic that I'd happily watch hours of the family just interacting.

Loving the films this thread is throwing up.

Brundle-Fly

Not much really happens in Whistle And I'll Come to You (1968) until the very scary payoff but even that is hardly the swimming pool bit in Poltergeist (1982) . It's just Michael Hordern burbling away pompously in a breakfast lounge, taking lonely walks on the beach and going to bed.

Chriddof

Quote from: daf on December 31, 2018, 04:45:57 PM
unless there's a totally black & silent film*, I don't think anything's gonna top that for "nothing really happening"

Quote from: daf on December 31, 2018, 04:45:57 PM
* Surely some "artist" MUST have done this brrrriliant idea - Warhol, possibly?

The closest anyone's come to that is Guy Debord of "Society Of The Spectacle" and Situationism fame - his first feature, Howls For Sade, is described thus:

QuoteHowls for Sade, a feature-length film created in June 1952, contains no images whatsoever. The soundtrack is accompanied by a completely blank white screen during the spoken dialogues. These dialogues, which altogether total no more than twenty minutes, are broken up into short fragments amid passages of total silence totaling one hour (the final portion of the film consisting of an uninterrupted 24-minute period of silence). During the silences the screen, and thus the theater, remains totally dark.

Source: Technical Notes on Guy Debord's First Three Films

There was also a similar film made by one of Debord's associates, Gil Wolman, called "The Anticoncept". It differed in that instead of alternating black and white screens there was a big circle taking up most of the frame - which was obtained from some sort of common test footage used by film labs, if I remember rightly - which blinked off and back on for randomly chosen periods of time. For double wankiness points, he demanded it should be projected onto a weather balloon instead of a screen.

Amusingly, there was a cinema owner in Paris during this time who decided to take the piss out of Debord and his friends by advertising a fake film called "Sadistic Skeleton". It would have simply consisted of turning off the auditorium lights for 15 minutes. I think this guy also came up with a fake bio and stuff to advertise it. When Debord and the others caught wind of it, they went over to his cinema and basically bullied him into not "showing" it. I believe they wouldn't let him leave his office until the advertised time had passed. A key component of Situationism was the complete lack of any sense of humour.

Quote from: daf on December 31, 2018, 04:45:57 PM
Absolutely no recollection of any actual "plot" - just a lot of lovely blue.

I've never seen Blue, but I understand the film's actual content exists as some sort of abstract monologue (plus music) about Jarman's impending death from AIDS. Apparently he was losing his vision as a result of the disease and suffered frequent interrupting flashes of blue light, and so chose to use a pure blue screen to give people some kind of idea what he was going through.

Howj Begg

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels

Virtually nothing happens, but every frame is pregnant with meaning.

Sin Agog

I remember 'scussing The Man Who Sleeps (https://rateyourmusic.com/film/un_homme_qui_dort/) with iamfredtitmus or whatever his name was on here.  I imagine it would hit way too close to home to anyone experiencing depression or just a tantalising soupcon of existential malaise on here.  It's terrifyingly on-pont.  Not quite as far-gone down that road, but awfully close, is Malle's The Fire Within.

NoSleep

Quoteunless there's a totally black & silent film*, I don't think anything's gonna top that for "nothing really happening"

The Flicker by Tony Conrad (yeah, the minimalist composer chappie who did an album with Faust was also an experimental filmmaker). Albeit alternately totally black or white (and not silent). Quite a lot happens whilst nothing really happens at all.

Chriddof

Ah, I forgot about The Flicker. Although there's a caption at the start giving a health warning (plus some jaunty 1920s music?) if I'm remembering it right.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Howj Begg on January 06, 2019, 03:46:35 AM
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels

Virtually nothing happens, but every frame is pregnant with meaning.

I've had this floating around on my hdd for a while now.

Howj Begg

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on January 06, 2019, 05:04:12 PM
I've had this floating around on my hdd for a while now.

It's great. It's been living inside my head since I saw it last week. Make sure you allot yourself a whole evening.

chveik

Quote from: Sin Agog on January 06, 2019, 11:07:31 AM
I remember 'scussing The Man Who Sleeps (https://rateyourmusic.com/film/un_homme_qui_dort/) with iamfredtitmus or whatever his name was on here.  I imagine it would hit way too close to home to anyone experiencing depression or just a tantalising soupcon of existential malaise on here.  It's terrifyingly on-pont.  Not quite as far-gone down that road, but awfully close, is Malle's The Fire Within.

the book is wonderful too. it's weird that the film is more popular now.
nothing 'really' happens in Ozu's films, and they're all very similar, but they're always full of emotions.

Lordofthefiles


Dex Sawash