Passionless Moments

Various individuals going about their days, suffer distracted moments in which they think ridiculous, amusing, or ordinary thoughts.

Jane Campion's early short subject offers us brief glimpses into the thoughts of people, none of which are particularly unusual. A small boy turns an errand into a world-saving moment; a woman eating sliced ham thinks about her uncle's pig; and so forth. It's an exercise in boredom, and the creativity it engenders... most of which isn't worth pursuing, although I've been on world-saving missions too, and so have you.

If there is a serious point to this movie (and I'm not sure there is), it's that a certain amount of boredom is necessary. Boredom impels us to relieve the boredom, boredom allows our minds to roam, boredom makes us write reviews of movies on the IMDb -- 7000+ and counting, as I type these words. Do they make a difference to anyone?

Probably not.

A remarkable first short film by a student (or fresh out of film school) - as much for the script as anything else. I happened to see it on TV as a teenager and then made various other people watch it too when I spotted it coming round again.

The film simply shows a series of short quirky moments in people's everyday lives. For example, a man stretches his arm as he wanders out of his house, and this gesture is mistaken by a neighbour who thinks he's waving at him.

Quirky moments such as these have since become the stuff of observational comedy, except that the ones depicted here are so small that they would pass quite unnoticed if not isolated and commented on by this film.

The short PASSIONLESS MOMENTS is one of Jane Campion's student films, made in 1983 during her time at Sydney's Australian Film and Television School. She directs a script written by Gerard Lee consist of ten short vignettes on embarrassing or awkward little moments that happen to everyone at some time or another, but which we seldom think about: a man stretching his arm out accidentally makes his neighbour think that he's waving to him, and thus instigates an awkward interaction between two men who have never even spoken before; a boy who has just bought green beans from the shop imagines that they will explode if he doesn't get them home in 20 seconds; a depressed man lying on the floor and looking at the ceiling notes the myriad motes of dust visible in the light.

All of the vignettes are narrated by the same man in a rather dry and analytical voice, which together with the quirky themes endows PASSIONLESS MOMENTS with humour. I wouldn't rank this among my top shorts, but I nonetheless am happy it's in my collection, and this is, along with "Peel", one of Campion's early successes.

While I really admire this film, a very lovely collection of moments which describe human idiosyncracy, I must say that it is best viewed in a theater. Some films have humor that is so sophisticated, so esoteric, that it demands projection at 24 frames per second, and anything less than the silver screen does not do it justice. Take "Stranger Than Paradise". The editing technique is what makes the film so funny and wry. The full of effect of the technique just doesn't fly on a television screen; t.v. screens just aren't cinematic. Passionless Moments is wonderful, but buyer beware: only purchase the film if you have access to a theater.

The later-much-more-recognizable-and-flat-out-acclaimed female filmmaker Jane Campion started her career making semi-obscure-but-still-notable short films, and this is one of the earliest and likely best examples of said films. 'Passionless Moments' is a film that straightforwardly depicts a few minor and mostly inconsequential awkward occurrences that are often entirely within the characters' minds. The film is quirky and queer, but there is something uniquely "bland" about the style, which isn't to say the film isn't visually interesting (there's one brilliant little moment in which Campion makes something as minor as lint blowing above a man's head seem like some sort of mystical, mythical moment of magic; it's super simple and brief but is hands down by far my favorite part of the (short) film), but that just the overall manner in which everything is handled is very quiet and quaint. There is virtually no soundtrack, not a single line of actual dialogue, and the narrator is nearly monotone in his narration. The film is often humorous, but ends with a super somber sort of feeling. A unique and intelligent arthouse film.