Meditative Movies: What These Three Films Have in Common
They are not ‘new age’ or touchy-feely
I’m not sure whether it’s Covid fatigue or simply burnout from the constant crazy news, which I’ve watched obsessively for a year, but I need calming entertainment. No, I’m not watching video of fireplaces or soothing scenery. But I have found myself watching what I call meditative movies.
These films have a certain sensibility that is intelligent but calm and the stories unfold slowly without reliance on often lazy writing like unnecessary action scenes. That’s a different kind of escape.
And it so happens that the three I’m going to talk about all have very high quality cinematography with a unique look. Three styles that take time to look at things from a different perspective, though they are all very different.
Science fiction, pre World War, and a town in New Jersey
The movies are Arrival, The Dig, and Paterson, not three films you would ordinarily lump together in a category. An alien encounter, an archaeological dig, and a poetry writing bus driver would, on the surface, seem odd bedfellows.
What they share is pacing, those visuals, and characters that are quiet and whose acting only slowly reveals their complexity. Arrival arguably has action scenes but the real action is the cerebral interaction between the linguist central character and the very different aliens as they try to find a language they can share. And the grief she carries for dead daughter.
In The Dig we meet a taciturn amateur archeologist (Ralph Fiennes) who modestly describes himself as an excavator, because he has no formal training, though, as it turns out, his knowledge is very extensive. Set in the days just before the WWII Blitz in the English countryside, he is hired to excavate a burial mound and makes a momentous discovery that changes our knowledge of ancient history. It’s basically a true story and beautifully told, avoiding that Masterpiece Theater tendency to glamorize Britain in the country.
Paterson is a Jim Jarmusch film, which means that basically nothing ever happens. Adam Driver’s bus driver gets up, walks to work, and drives his bus, with only little…