Poll Suggestion: Slow Cinema

@ElMaruecan82​ 

Wow, the list really made me boil inside. Basically, according to the "tagger", Ingmar Bergman is a slow director. What a cliché!

I used the tag to be objective, but I couldn't there were some films on the list that just didn't belong here. In my opinion, without knowing anything about them, someone just added everything made by Bergman, Antonioni, Tarkovsky, Tarr, Angelopoulos and Kiarostami.

I haven't seen The Seventh Seal, Persona, Cries and Whispers, Autumn Sonata, The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Sleep, Silence and Fanny and Alexander so it felt wrong to remove them. From Bergman the only film I saw but didn't remove was Skammen (1968). Other films I watched but didn't remove were Andrei Rublev, La notte, L'avventura and Roma.

I must say I disagree with your definition of "slow cinema", though. Slow cinema isn't inherently pretentious and pointless like you seem to suggest. As I define it, "slow" is actually a quality, not a synonym of "drag". If I made the list myself, I would include The Tree of Life (a masterpiece) , Paris, Texas (another masterpiece) , but not Benjamin Button nor Once Upon a Time in America (I haven't seen Wings of Desire.)

Thanks for your reply, but just one small clarification: I didn't and I would never associate "slow cinema" with pretentious film-making, while many "arthouse" films happen to be slow, as a matter of fact, many movies I found pretentious were the antithesis of slowness (some Godard, Gilliam and Fellini films notably).

My definition of slowness is on a pure narrative level and it's got nothing to do with length, I've always loved Ebert's statement about a good movie never being too long and a bad one, never too short. I abide by that definition. Now it's possible that I unconsciously associate the lack of a proper plot with slowness but I guess it all depends on my initial expectations, I don't know...

I guess I just didn't like the way the author threw every known Bergman's film... he lost credibility when he (or she) put "Cries and Whispers", if there's one Bergman's film that is NOT slow, it's this one :)

@Peter_pbn​ 

I guess: https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/10-great-slow-films is a possibility, but without the popular arthouse filmmakers such as Tarkovsky, Bergman and Antonioni, it would considerably reduce the popularity of the poll. I'm gonna try to find a better option.