![]() Those qualities that informed Akerman's decision to make Jeannie Deilman as long as it is, however, aren't the same reasons Babylon needs its 188-minute runtime to creatively thrive. Jeanne Dielman needs to exceed 200 minutes to hammer home the suffocating qualities of its lead character’s domestic life - director Chantal Akerman's gift for glacial pacing and prolonged single shots is utilized so perfectly within these confines. Even more impressively, so many of these features have very idiosyncratic reasons for why their runtimes are so essential. These characters aren’t looking to leave the scene immediately and Drive My Car’s runtime ensures that the audience doesn’t need to exist promptly either.Ĭomb through the history of cinema, and you’ll find countless examples of movies, ranging from Hoop Dreams to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles that don’t just work okay within a longer narrative, they excel because of their expansive lengths. Given how critical these exchanges are to Drive My Car's depiction of people's varying responses to life-altering events, they shouldn’t be rushed. This runtime also allows important sequences like Kafuku sharing a dinner with Lee Yoo-na ( Park Yu-rim) and her partner Gong Yoon-soo ( Jin Dae-yeon) all the time they need to breathe. These things don’t happen overnight and the expansive length of Drive My Car allows that aspect of reality to be beautifully reflected. Instead, the slower pace of the three-hour story lets viewers recognize a realistic depiction of gradual psychological improvement, however minimal. Here, audiences don’t see years in the life of protagonist Yūsuke Kafuku ( Hidetoshi Nishijima) as he grapples with the ripple effects of loss. This length can also be a perfect opportunity to explore gradual changes in a person, such as in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 2021 masterpiece Drive My Car. You really feel like you’re living the lives of other people over the course of three hours, with this runtime affording filmmakers a chance to fill in every nook and cranny of a person’s life. ![]() The Irishman is a perfect example of the kind of immersive and expansive storytelling that’s only possible when movies are allowed to run for so long. What’s normal behavior to one person is foreign territory to another, but that unfamiliarity doesn’t make that behavior “evil.” Since many longer movies, like An Elephant Sitting Still or any of the works of Béla Tarr, are famous for being such quiet exercises known for requiring great amounts of concentration, they’re not going to fit these people’s contexts of what a movie “needs to do.” That sounds a bit strange to me as someone who solely concentrates on any movie I’m watching whether it’s A Matter of Life and Death or The Wrong Missy, but then again, some sports devotees would think it’s weird that I can remember off the top of my head when Daybreakers hit theaters. For many people, watching features is simply a way to provide background noise while doing other tasks or hanging out with friends rather than something you exclusively focus on for multiple hours. You don’t need to have a bouncing baby in your arms, though, to be valid in not immediately leaping at 180+ minute movies all the time. This was when Amy Schumer made a lengthy joke at the expense of The Power of the Dog mocking its runtime as too long despite the Jane Campion feature running for only 126 minutes, or just four minutes longer than Sonic the Hedgehog 2. This perception has become so widespread that it even crept into the 94th Academy Awards. The very idea of sitting so long is an immediate turn-off. In fact, in many cases, three-hour-plus movies have gotten a bad rap, with people turning down the opportunity to watch such a feature no matter what its plot or cast is. I may be ride-or-die for movies that take their time, but that’s not an opinion shared by everyone. That alone is a glorious experience while the way certain narratives just get extra absorbing when stretching on for so long is a similarly extraordinary thing to witness. With a three-hour movie, though, I finally get to firmly root my feet in one spot for a prolonged period of time, especially if I’m watching it in a theater. It’s often hard to stay focused in one place for too long. Existing as an adult is so busy with so many people, responsibilities, and worries always nipping at your heels.
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