Watches
August 15, 2020
Not so much a narrative film or a typical documentary, but more of a film essay. The kind you'd rather expect to see in a museum. It comes with high acclaim and from what I'd read Marker kept a rather strong focus on Japan, but even then this film failed to capture my attention, let alone sustain it.
Visually it's rather poor. Rather grainy footage that feels quite random and haphazard. Some very crude filters here and there are supposed to make the visuals a bit more abstract, but just made them look cheaper. That's half of the film, the other half is a droning voice-over that does its best to be pensive and philosophical.
The insights in Japanese culture (and a few others) range from rather simplistic too construed and farfetched. The form was absolutely bland and didn't get me in the right mood for this and with a runtime of more than 100 minutes and even some repetition, I got quite annoyed by the end of it.