Reflections on week 3 writing exercise

In class we did an unusual writing exercise where we wrote down a lot of different things that interested us. It was very strange at first because I increasingly began to wonder why I was doing this, why were we writing things that seemed non-consequential, daily actions that interested us? How could a door opening, a window closing, chopping an apple with a knife be interesting?

Then I started to think about it in a different way. I remembered my favourite film, ‘In the Mood for Love’, and the famous slow motion sequences set to moody violin. What I noticed about these sequences, about what was actually happening during these moments, were that they were extremely ordinary moments.

I came to the realisation that the most cinematic moments in the film were also the most ordinary moments – walking into a room, down a staircase, waiting for noodles, eating noodles. Why did Wong Kar Wai find these moments so interesting? I really don’t know why but they work somehow. Maybe it was a way of balancing the tone of a scene – during the films most heavy and emotional content, Wong Kar Wai shows a large amount of restraint, the most emotional moment of the film isn’t lathered with sensuous camera moves and slow motion, it is a static shot that succeeds a musical moment to create a deep, lonely silence. Both moments feel just as cinematic as the other, it didn’t matter what was actually going on in the scene.

I had to change my definition of what being ‘cinematic’ meant. The man driving a car around for an hour and a half in ‘A Taste of Cherry’ is just as cinematic as the Normandy Beach landing in ‘Saving Private Ryan’, as is a door opening, a window closing or chopping an apple with a knife.

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