What makes a film boring?

[oldsheperd]

Only film I fell asleep watching in the theaters was Saving Private Ryan but that's because it was my 4th time seeing it.

[flyonthewall2983]

"What makes a movie infuriating?"

Missing a great scene because nature called. I had this happen with The Departed. The 2nd time I saw it, the scene where Queenan and Dignam see Costello was completely new to me.

[Stagger Lee]

For example Ruby Rhod in The Fifth Element

In fact, any Chris Tucker character.

[flyonthewall2983]

For example Ruby Rhod in The Fifth Element

In fact, any Chris Tucker character.

My most favorite is his role in Jackie Brown. Or in fact any film he's in where he's killed off before he gets completely under the skin.

[cinemartin]

I was in a video store recently and I witnessed an argument between the clerk and some lady returning a film late. She said "I wanted to watch the Godard, but I fell asleep 3 times. I mean, I liked it, but it was so hypnotic". I laughed for a minute straight. I thought she was a fool for not just claiming that the film was boring. I don't know what film she was talking about, but it was obviously boring her. Just because it was "a Godard" it was "hypnotic". If I watched the same film, I may not fall asleep or think it's boring, but if the film was Keep Your Right Up, I would be astonished if she stayed awake. I've fallen asleep in Pan's Labyrinth and Zombie's Halloween. Those movies weren't hypnotic, they were boring. To me the biggest problem lies not with what films are (subjectively) boring, but the reasons people claim films are boring. All films are created equal, as are all filmmakers. If we substitute "hypnotic" for "boring" we will let filmmakers with some stature get away with murder.

[domino harvey]

I hate to quote a late-90s one-hit wonder, but I will: If you're bored then you're boring.

[jojo]

Every time I come up with a "rule", I later find an exception and contradict myself. I think the difference between "boring" and "interesting+" is a very fine line, but it's so important a line that it can make you love or hate something just because of that fine line.

For example, I can make it through a Pirates of the Caribbean movie despite it being admittedly ponderous and for the most part unsubstantial aside from the eye candy, but I fell asleep about 20 minutes into Twister, which is much shorter and (supposedly) less ponderous. I can't even say it's any bias against a director, either, because I thought Speed was one of the best "dumb fun" times I've had watching a movie, and I continue to enjoy it on subsequent viewings.

I have to work to keep my eyes open when watching any number of Fellini films, but with Antonioni I'm utterly entranced (most of the time). Which is funny, since Fellini is the guy who everybody loves now, while Antonioni has settled into cult territory now.

I could point to any number of reasons as to WHY I can't get into Fellini, but I could also name tons of movies I love which employ the very same elements I disliked, in, say, La Dolce Vita or Amarcord.

[miless]

I think that The Dutchess of Langeis (or "Don't touch The Axe") is an intentionally boring film, which is what makes it so brilliant. It becomes tedious and often enraging for the fact that nothing happens for a good part of the movie... but then you realize that things are just as tedious and enraging, for the same exact reasons, to the main characters entrapped in the manners of the time (and like Balzac's work in general). Not really fun to watch (at least for me it wasn't), but worth every moment for just for the odd feeling it arose.

On the other hand, I recently saw a program of shorts by Weerasethakul, and god-damned was I bored senseless. Despite the initial (and Brilliant) short (Anthem), the rest were digital and video shots with nothing at all interesting happening (sort of like Mysterious Object at Noon, but without any people). I started thinking about other things, like how uncomfortable the chairs were, or how thirsty I was and the films seemed to go by slower.

For me a large number of Western never appealed to me. I do like some (decidedly offbeat/re-interpretive) but the classic western (and Samurai, for that matter) plot never really appealed to me. It was so formulaic. I do like the idea of using the west as a backdrop to a good story, but most of the times they were 'genre' pictures. Perhaps I should watch several of them again to see if my perceptions have changed since i was a kid.

I guess boredom for me is just a feeling that comes over me from not being interested. I start to fidget... and then I notice the fidgeting, and then I notice everyone else fidgeting. Although I will often be hypnotized by slow 'boring' films. Silent Light nearly neutralized my brain, I was fully engrossed. Sátántangó was one of the most amazing experiences in a theater I've ever had (Silent Light, too), It's amazing how fast 7 hours can go (even when they had to stop it several times due to bad splices).

[Belmondo]

For me, boring is when the elements do not quite come together in a film that I am interested in.
Not lookin' for a fight here, but I recently saw Antonioni's "The Passenger" for the first time; after loving and purchasing the informal trilogy of "L'Avventura", "La Notte" and "L'Eclisse". I was bored, although I'm having a hell of a time articulating just why, particularly since it was my first of his in color and I love Jack Nicholson. I found it to be tough going in a way the others certainly were not - and "The Passenger" had more of a plot than any of them. Was that the problem?

[luridedith]

Self-conscious inoffensiveness and lack of originality bores me.

[colinr0380]

but I fell asleep about 20 minutes into Twister, which is much shorter and (supposedly) less ponderous. I can't even say it's any bias against a director, either, because I thought Speed was one of the best "dumb fun" times I've had watching a movie, and I continue to enjoy it on subsequent viewings.

The problem is that Twister is trying to make an action film out of something that is inherently undramatic for all but a few of the set piece scenes and then it has to fill the remaining 100 minutes with infighting, love triangles and some attempts at showing the characters have some sort of meterological work to do (I did get some amusement, from a UK perspective where the weather never really goes to huge extremes, by the attempts to try and make watching the weather into a new kind of cool and sexy extreme sport for people who like to live life to the max! I kept thinking of what Michael Fish would look like chasing after twisters!). It was not a bad film, just completely bland and predictable (and I like Speed as well - I think a lot of what happens when a film is a big success is that whatever film comes next, unless it is impossible to defend as being any good at all, benefits from the goodwill critics and audiences have from their previous experience of the previous film by that director, actor etc. So Twister didn't get ecstatic reviews but probably better ones that it would have received if it wasn't riding the crest of the Speed wave!)

Of course Twister also benefits in comparison by not being as shockingly bad as De Bont's next films, Speed 2 and The Haunting! Not even Speed goodwill would seem to be able to save a director from poor reviews after those cinematic crimes.

[domino harvey]

Twister's a guilty pleasure of mine. "I gotta go, we got cows."

[Murdoch]

I find the more films I watch that are artistic or slow-paced the less I can tolerate big Hollywood blockbusters. I saw Iron Man and was bored throughout the entire movie, I've actually come to a point where I just find the entire superhero sub-genre tedious. I'm hoping I like Dark Knight, but if not I think I might just have to avoid any movie with the Marvel or DC logo.

[Tommaso]

I think that The Dutchess of Langeis (or "Don't touch The Axe") is an intentionally boring film, which is what makes it so brilliant. It becomes tedious and often enraging for the fact that nothing happens for a good part of the movie... but then you realize that things are just as tedious and enraging, for the same exact reasons, to the main characters entrapped in the manners of the time (and like Balzac's work in general). Not really fun to watch (at least for me it wasn't), but worth every moment for just for the odd feeling it arose.

Very interesting point of view, though I can't fully agree with it. I'd also say that the slow-going quality of the film in a way reflects the entrapment of the characters, but instead of boring me, I found it actually quite fascinating to see (again) how much time Rivette allows us to take in all the details of both their relationship and the setting(s) in which this relationship happens. I haven't read anything by Balzac, but this attention to detail and the carefulness of the analysis in this film (like in many other Rivettes) reminds me of Proust, who is an author whom many people find boring, of course. My problems with the film lie mainly in the Depardieu character (and/or Depardieu's acting), but boring? Never.

I fully agree with Murdoch about the Hollywood blockbusters. They create boredom because they use so many unnecessary effects and pyrotechnics without having any sort of depth to justify them. There are exceptions to the rule of course. "Lord of the Rings" is a very guilty pleasure of mine, but that one at least is based on an excellent book with more depth to it than is often thought.

[Michael Kerpan]

I'm with Tommaso on Rivette's film. I found it not only extremely interesting throughout -- but also very entertaining. I also found it quite humorous (at many points -- even if the humor was sometimes rather bleak).

On the other hand, I found the first LOTR the most excruciatingly boring film I've ever encountered. (I have no idea what the subsequent films were like -- nor do I care). Had I not been at the theater with my family, I would have fled at the one-hour point.

MEK
(A decades-long Tolkien fan)

[kekid]

I find a film boring when it is deliberately obscure; when it seems to be designed for an inner circle, who are expected to know a lot of context outside the film. Now many films can be better enjoyed if one is familiar with the context, but the films (and other forms of art) that I find boring are those that cannot be enjoyed at all unless you are in the clique of the author. The sui generis example of this, for me, in cinema is Godard. I want to make sure that my comment is not interpreted as "anything difficult is boring". It relates to what makes the film difficult. For the same reason I find Joyce's Ulysses and most of Schonberg's music boring. In contrast, I find Satantango, even though difficult, quite hypnotic. It creates its own world, and its language is universal in a way Godard's work is not. I believe it is this very "exclusive right of entry" that makes the admirers of these artists such passionate defenders of their art.

[domino harvey]

Disagree 100%, the best films like the best jokes are those with a narrow, specific target in mind. This is why most blockbusters are so boring: they've been scrubbed clean and made accessible to the widest possible audience. You don't have to understand a film to enjoy it.

[MichaelB]

A claim that Ulysses is boring says infinitely more about the limited horizons of the person making it than anything else.

And I absolutely refute the claim that you need to be a paid-up member of "the clique of the author" to appreciate it. Even when I first read it at sixteen with little advance preparation, the linguistic fireworks (and a different set every chapter, what's more) were exhilarating purely in terms of their own verbal virtuosity - never mind the treasures that subsequent readings unearthed.

[colinr0380]

I would agree with MichaelB and the quote domino made a while ago about saying something is boring making a comment more about the viewer than the film/book/whatever they are reviewing.

The problem is that 'boring' is a very subjective feeling. It can't be applied to every blockbuster film just as it doesn't apply to every obscure, personal film. It is important to move beyond recognising your feeling of a lack of engagement with a film and to consider why the film isn't working. Is there a glaring fault in the structure or the pacing of the film? (i.e. is the film taking 100 minutes to tell you what you had already guessed at in the first five minutes?), is it badly edited? Do you find the storyline obvious, or trite, or illogical, or impenetrable?

One of the reasons that I like film (and reading) so much is that you have a set of images and a storyline that is set in stone - once a film or a book is finished it is locked into a fixed form and remains unchanging for as long as it exists (unless it gets damaged or tampered with of course! But what I'm getting at is that something like A Matter of Life And Death remains fundamentally the same film today as it was as its premiere). What does change is the audience's reaction to a film, either due to different audiences for the same film or for changing attitudes of one viewer over time to what is essentially the same piece of work (it is why I feel that rewatching films is an important thing to do - to track our changing attitudes to a picture).

The best films allow 'breathing' space for a range of reactions but really any film by remaining an unchangeable sequence of edited sound and images in a way reflects criticism back at the viewer, who is the constantly shifting partner in the relationship. One of the great things about film is that, used to its fullest potential, the audience can gain more understanding, not just of the world around them or of obvious 'moral lessons', but of themselves through introspection and trying to understand what a film means to them and why they feel the way they do about one film and not about another.

Being bored is a starting point - trying to figure out why we didn't engage with a film is the next, extremely worthwhile, step to take - not only to improve our grasp on cinema (even a bad film can teach lessons on what not to do, what went wrong or why something that should have worked did not) but also so that we can comment more effectively about what we thought of a film to others than just "lolz, that flick sucked!"

[BrianInAtlanta]

I wouldn't presume to expect others to share my taste, but I've never been as bored watching any Godard as I was watching The Matrix Reloaded.

I certainly wouldn't count myself as a member of any Godard "inner circle" either. When I read what theory JLG was trying to express in his movies, I generally ignore it. For me, he is, as Coutard said on one of the Criterion documentaries, just a guy trying to find a new way to show things.

Sorry for spinning this topic toward the Godard forum. One tries so hard to stay on topic.

[jguitar]

I haven't read through this thread very carefully, so maybe this has already been said: about a year ago, I tried watching some of the Pinky Violence films and related stuff--basically, the sorts of films that Tarantino is obsessed with. And I found them unbelievably, mind-crushingly boring (Lady Snowblood comes to mind). It was sort of a discovery for me; most things that fall loosely in the "exploitation cinema" category are pretty boring for me. I'm not going to try to speculate as to why this may be--obviously, some people like this stuff!!--and it's always possible that I'll find something I like within this category. But it all just leaves me cold for some reason.

That's my sweeping generalization for the day.

[Antoine Doinel]

For whatever it's worth, I watched Shaft for the first time the other week and I found it be very boring. There's a film that would easily have used a good twenty minutes cut. The opening credit sequence of Shaft walking around Manhattan is unbearably long.

[tryavna]

On the other hand, I found the first LOTR the most excruciatingly boring film I've ever encountered. (I have no idea what the subsequent films were like -- nor do I care). Had I not been at the theater with my family, I would have fled at the one-hour point.

MEK
(A decades-long Tolkien fan)

I thought the first film actually had a few very good moments in it: especially the horseback chase to the Bruinen (though I think even here Jackson changed the characters involved). But otherwise I tend to agree. I found Jackson's interpretation of the trilogy far poorer and more dull than my own imagination when I read the originals in my teens.

I also agree with the other Michael that there's nothing remotely boring about Ulysses or that you need to be "in the know" already when you read it. Finnegans Wake, on the other hand, is an entirely different kettle of fish....

I would, however, agree that Godard is a director you either get or you don't. (I've said this several times before.) I wouldn't say that all of his films are boring (though I kept glancing at the run-time throughout Tout Va Bien), but there are only a couple I truly enjoy.

[Michael Kerpan]

Finnegan's Wake is quite funny and interesting -- taken a page or two at a time. However, I can't imagine getting all the way through the book -- ever. But it has never bothered me that I can't.

Tout va bien producing ennui? Vive la difference. ;~}

[Kinsayder]

The most boring book I have ever read was The Silmarillion. I was a teenager in a Tolkien phase and I wanted to "go the distance". I think it gave me brain damage, as I can't remember a thing about it.