Passionless Moments

Jane Campion's "Passionless Moments" is a short film containing ten short films. More than being simply short, they are tiny. The film deals with nonsense that goes through one's mind that no one dares share when asked "what are you thinking about". It's really a wonderful concept for a short film, and the result is a funny, touching piece of work. It would be impossible to pick a favorite bit, and truthfully it would do a disservice to the film itself to try and express the actual occurrences in each mini-short. It might be worth noting that Gerard Lee was indicated in the credits as ex-director. Perhaps that's why the finished product has far more visible passion than the sketches themselves, which comes straight from the filmmaker's chair.

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.

Campion and Lee had the audience roaring at their look of everyday moments we take for granted. The narrator's deadpan voice adds a nice sardonic touch. My favorites were the man singing "that 70's song about cleaning up jeans," and the little girl with the tissue box. An amusing little film, made suddenly poignant by the narrator's last voice over - approximately 'there are over one billion moments in a neighborhood, and most of them are gone before we realise it.'

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.

Each of the segments is so simple, yet Campion displays a great deal of ingenuity for being able to not overlook such mundane aspects of human nature. As idiosyncratic as the events may be, they are still very much normal. I think this is what makes the ideas seem so amazing, is that they are the product of mere observation, of using the everyday events of the real world to make a film.

I loved the part about cleaning the jeans. That was just hilarious.