El Burro Volador

The other day I had the privilege of watching Le Cercle Rouge, a seminal French heist movie that has apparently inspired many of the directors I admire.  Perhaps the most notable feature of the movie, for the contemporary American viewer, is the low incidence of dialogue.  Many sustained sequences follow characters performing some action, whether mundane or dramatic, in more or less total silence.  While this is most arresting during the famous half-hour heist sequence itself, it occurs throughout the film.

A character driving his car takes a turnoff into a pasture.  Drives across the bumpy, rutted ground.  Stops the car, shuts off the engine.  Gets out, walks to a nearby stump.  Sits down.  Takes out a cigarette.  Lights it.  Begins to smoke.  Each action occurs slowly, deliberately, and is allowed to be completed without any jump cuts, just a long, sustained shot.  And all this time not a word is said.

I can’t help but feel that in a Hollywood film made today he would have been talking on a cell phone, perhaps advancing the plot, or, more likely, would not have been alone to begin with, having a funny sidekick along to add noise to such a scene.  Or perhaps it would have been edited into a montage.  Regardless, sustained intervals of silence are generally avoided like jury duty in “commercial” films these days, and I think it is a shame.  I’m not saying that every film needs to be like Gerry, but I do enjoy the occasional piece of understimulation amidst the constant multimedia bombardment that is the “typical” American lifestyle.  It is nice to have space for your mind to work, to have to guess and extrapolate to build meaning instead of having a surfeit of message blared at you.  I guess that is why many of the films that I enjoy are described by reviewers as “cerebral”; I really do like having to use that creepy-looking glob of stuff inside my thick skull.