User reviews

I found it. The worst film I've ever watched, and yes I did watch it from start to finish.

I guess some people's argument of this film being Avant Garde and just "out of the mainstream film-goer's understanding of what a masterpiece is" have merit if you were to go by a quote of the Director himself -

"I make up the rules of a game and I play it. If I seem to be losing, I change the rules."

He can't lose. Anything anyone says to criticize it can be shot down with that quote as a basis.

Examples:

1) It's not entertaining

"well it isn't meant to be"

2) The soundtrack (for lack of a better word at the moment) is too jarring to be enjoyed

"You're missing the point, he didn't want you to enjoy it"

In my opinion, films are meant to be some form of entertainment and they're supposed to be enjoyed. Looking at art at a museum (as some reviews compare this to) is entertainment too, and people who have an interest in art will enjoy it - but comparing this to that is simply not the same. It's comparing apples to syphilis. Can you study syphilis? Sure. Is it pleasant? No.

But another quote by the director gives equal firepower to both the people who like and dislike the film -

"Perception of the work is the on-lookers department."

Do I perceive this film to be unforgettable?

Yes

Do I perceive this film to be good?

Absolutely not, and I think this is where the people in support of this film get confused...

Unforgettable =/= good.

Eons ago this film was presented in my history of art class at university. What I really remember is my professor claiming it as a necessity of any art student to view it as a right of passage. While viewing the film, though only 45 minutes in length I managed to fall asleep. This was the only time I have ever fallen asleep in class. Even watching my early film class with D. W. Griffith's Intolerance in a very hot, stuffy room in the most uncomfortable seats ever did not make me visit the land of Nod.

Yet it holds value to many others in its artistic nature. Sadly as I failed to consciously view most of it I can only give short and brief opinion on it as a good sleep aid.

Like others who've seen this film, I watched in film school. It's a one-gag joke that may seem boring but yet the film is unforgettable: A long, slow zoom through a window into a room, eventually closing up onto a picture of a wave.

During the painfully slow zoom things happen in the room, though it's never busy or plot-driven. The highlight for me was when someone snapped on a radio and the Beatles "Strawberry Fields" played. Was that an underhanded way of saying that the film was a bad LSD trip?

Beyond the Beatles, the soundtrack consists of a long, annoying, screeching crescendo. It's awful, but try as I could, I was unable to catch a short nap during the film because of the soundtrack. For that it earns my praise. I mean, if Hollywood can't keep me awake with their drivel, then this film deserves some kind of award.

Do yourself a favor and instead of actually watching this film just read an analysis of it. Concept of the movie: stationary camera in an empty room zooms for 45 minutes. A few people visit the room, some of them play The Beatles for a while - for the rest of the movie, the soundtrack consists of a high-pitched whine. At three minutes, this would have been an amusing bit of '60s avantgarde nonsense. At 45 minutes, it's a dreadful experience. The movie provokes absolutely no emotional or intellectual response, and you can't even take a nap because of the soundtrack.

A friend showed me this recently.... I'm assuming as a joke. Beyond the most boring thing I've ever seen in my life and I hope no one else has to endure it.

Michael Snow's masterpiece, or something like that, is a "structural picture" from 1967 called Wavelength. Though the film was incredibly painful to my ears, it for some reason has stuck with me. After a long thinking period, I have decided that I actually really liked it.

At a little under 45 minutes long, Wavelength is not an easy film to get through. It features a non-moving camera set in a large room, and nothing else. The camera captured the action that goes on in the room to create what Snow calls "a summation of my nervous system, religious inklings and aesthetic ideas." On the surface it is merely a stiff frame of three walls, a floor and a ceiling with the occasional, but brief, interaction of a human variety. But once you look closer you will realize that your eyes have deceived you.

Through the entire film, Snow has his camera zooming in at an extremely slow speed. After realizing this, your eyes will be fixated on the screen in a desperate attempt to convince yourself that you are not insane. I found the entire concept to be so emotionally exhausting and frustrating that once the film was over I could do nothing but watch it again. It was a pleasantly unpleasing experience that did nothing but expand my conception of conventional filmmaking.

I have to admit that the soundtrack behind the film was a bit confusing for me. It was nonexistent for most of the film, but all of a sudden…WHAM! Imagine the most ear-piercing scream or squeal that you have ever heard. Now combine them to make the last half an hour of Wavelength. I honestly thought that I was going to disturb my neighbor's dog with the high pitched whistles and unexplainable wails that accompanied the actionless action. If you can handle the sounds you will be rewarded by the film.

With Wavelength, Snow created the most aesthetically praised work in all of avant-garde. His technique ultimately forced me into a starring contest with the screen. It was me versus the structure of a single room. It was me versus the nonexistent, but ever present, movement of the camera's lenses. I waited arrogantly for the film to flinch. It never did. And then it ended.

Understand that I am a fan of avant-garde cinema. I have seen quite a lot of it - some very good, some very bad - but no film I have ever seen (avant-garde or otherwise) has ever been more excruciating to me than "Wavelength." Like the title of my post says, I know what excruciating means intimately and I do believe I'd rather suffer another five days with a kidney stone like I did a few years ago, than be forced to sit through this film for a third time (in film school I was forced to watch it twice for different teachers).

Stick to Maya Deren or Stan Brakhage or Bunuel or anybody to satisfy your avant-garde tastes. Experimenting with "Wavelength" might not be worth the pain.

I found this film fascinating. It contains drama, suspense, mystery, and characters, although the whole thing takes place in one continuous shot, but with very subtle cuts, and some obvious changes in lighting effects and film stock. Some of the action takes place off screen, so the viewer can only hear what's happening and has to imagine it. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen, because I was wondering what would happen next. The camera moves forward, but so slowly your eye can barely catch it. This film does more without moving the camera, than many films do with dozens of shots. If you like avant garde or experimental film, this is definitely worth a look.

"Wavelength" is so avant-garde that it merges cinema with torture in a true definition without exaggeration. Right next to Warhol's "Vinyl" but almost without characters or dialog, the director holds us in a room where effects and editing dictate the changes going in there while the still camera records days going by, strange noises causing a great deal of pain in our ears. Like "Vinyl", the only salvation is in the brief soundtrack, here with "Strawberry Fields Forever" playing at the first minutes. Apparently there's a story involving new residents at this apartment, a dead body and all but most of the time it's a suffocating experience of being trapped in a nightmare that never ends until waves come crashing in. It goes on for 45 minutes. If you're brave enough like me, you endure the test until the final moment. Many collapse after 5 minutes. The ones who like this are just fooling everybody.

This is not a movie. This is the act of deliberately inflicting severe physical pain and annoyance in whoever watch it, therefore torture. The difference is that you can walk out of if or turn it off. Art like great literature has the power of causing effects, sensations, feelings and above disturbance with the world we live in, almost as if a masochist device we proudly say we enjoy and appreciate and wouldn't hesitate in going through again. Why? Because the artists are giving us something, giving us life reflected as it is, they're sharing their views, they're telling the truth. Things like "Wavelength" shatters that notion because we're not getting anything but a pretentious saying that there's something in there, to quote his own words, Mr. Snow says of this film: "it's a summation of my nervous system, religious inklings and aesthetic ideas". If analyzed movies as a person, well, then I wasn't pleased to meet you. Art disturbs but we can enjoy it. "Wavelength" disturbs but we don't enjoy. And I empathize the word art cause this can't be it's reverse, a simple entertainment, in no possible way. It's not easing my mind, it's not distracting me.

I made the comparison with Warhol, contemporary of Snow but a few miles distant and in the right road, because "Vinyl" was that painful but the Artist (with the capital A, indeed) was trying to create a story in a proper way so audiences would be part of it. It's hard to like but it's easy to understand. Not to mention, Andy could film the Empire State for 24 hours, a couple kissing for a long time, a guy eating mushrooms for 40 minutes AND make something out of those moments. The experimentation worked, life was there and possibilities along with it.

It gets two stars because I've seen more disastrous waste of time, and it was fun to sing along with The Beatles at the beginning. The noise that comes afterwards will haunt me for life. Once again, damn you, Schneider! 2/10

Experimental cinema doesn't get more difficult or perplexing and yet all the same rewarding in some hard to define sense than Wavelength. I might feel like I'm less writing a review than I am writing some homework assignment for an art history class, but Michael Snow's film, which is all in one 42 minute shot, is something that can be said that is literally unlike any other film - one might want to compare it to Andy Warhol's stationary exercises, but that is just putting a camera down and not doing anything as far as doing motions or effects or audio treatment, it's more about the subjects in the frame doing things.

With Snow, there *is* a process, and it's something that could possibly make some of you sick. But first, here's what should be noted: this is not entirely an unbroken take. It is "unbroken" as far as the camera's set-up, since it isn't moving from its spot like on a dolly track and the zoom is moving at a pace a snail would go, 'catch up, man, Jesus!' But all cameras holding film need to change the reels, so every so often as Snow is zooming in on the inside of a room that has about four windows looking out over a city, with two chairs, and three pictures on the farthest wall, he does cut in with what could be called visual static. He also does some treatment to the image as far as super-imposed colors and strobes, or what may be the 1960s take on that, and then near the very end of the film (in the last two/three minutes) there is what one might call a dissolve. There may be more dissolves here, but I lost count by a certain point.

Wavelength is not frustrating to look at since every so often it'll throw in some people to look at - and sure, one of them, for no reason, drops dead (this is the experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton making an appearance - I think, though I'm not sure, future film critic Amy Taubin shows up later on as the woman making a phone call telling someone that there's a dead man on the floor) - or even a song (the Beatles's 'Strawberry Fields Forever' is the one sliver of music to pipe in on a radio). But the audio of it is unique, and I'm not sure if it's in a way that is meant to make one curl up into a ball. It's borderline torture; think of when a tea kettle is ready and keeps on whistling - it's that, times a hundred. As the image in Snow's lens brings us inexorably, every so slowly but in that gradual way that you WILL focus on what he wants you to look at, the audio becomes ever so sharply loaded with noise. Compared to this, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music is easy listening.

I had a different experience watching this than maybe some of you; it's available online so I hooked up my hd TV and watched it on a big screen as as I could, but I also could turn down the volume. If I saw this on 35mm in a theater with good light and good sound, I wonder if I would be more put off. But this isn't a knock against Snow exactly; I realized that the sound wasn't going to go down, so I decided to go with it. If this is the artist's process, to bring one into... well, what? I hasten to call it an 'avant-garde masterpiece', or some pretentious disaster, because I feel like/know I would need more of a critical justification. What is this TRYING to do, and does it accomplish it? Simply put: everyone who comes to this will get something out of it (for me, one part that I found compelling is how my mind might wander while looking at this shot zooming closer, and ten SNAP back into Snow's aesthetic when he messed with the image, adding color and more ferocious noise).

Maybe all you need to make a movie isn't a girl and a gun, but a single room with an interesting look and ideas that push the boundaries of what one expects to see in a motion picture. Snow may be saying, 'look at this room, look at what's going on, listen to it, and there may be things going on you didn't expect - look closer.' Or it could be a fantastical trip to do drugs to. This does move, but in such a way that creeps up on you as it creeps along. And ultimately it is... unique.

There's nothing to see here. No, literally - it's 45 minutes of slowly zooming in on a picture hanging on someone's living room wall. That's it. That's literally the whole movie. Apparently a murder also happens off-screen at one point, which we can hear, but no time for that, there's this really neat blank wall with a couple indiscernible pictures hanging on it this movie just has to show you. Oh, and then there's cop sirens and that's how it ends. This is just white-noise background humming someone could've captured with their camcorder and then tried to pass off as an ambient art instillation meant to be projected on the blank walls of art museums. Or something. If you're curious, a few seconds is all you need because that's pretty much the whole entirety of the movie. There's a legend that says Bodhidharma spent 20 years staring at a cave wall. This must've been made with that in mind, as it's a sample of what that must've been like.

5.9? Really? A rating that low? I know the reason. THE WRONG PEOPLE SAW THE FILM! Why did they? They probably weren't warned.

"Wavelength" is about as far from mainstream you can go. An experimental film, zooming in on a window, over a week period. Of course, other things happen. A man(played by experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton) dies, probably murdered. Then, we continuously watch to see what happens. The screen changes color, and we just see what happens to this dead body!

I, personally, find "Wavelength" to be a brilliant Avant-garde masterpiece. A film unlike almost any other, powerful and interesting! But, you may not, and that's okay. This is because ITS A MOVIE WHERE YOU LOOK AT A WINDOW FOR 40 MINUTES! That is certainly not going to be for everybody! So, I'd recommend this to people to enjoy experimental film, or at least have a strong interest in it. Everyone else, I don't really think so.

I watched this film/installation from Michael Snow in MoMA recently and in a way I feel lucky to have seen it in the way I did, particularly in light of the comments here from those that also saw it. For me the good fortunate comes from seeing a version called WVLNT, which is also known as Wavelength for Those Short of Time, or words to that effect. Essentially this version was the original film broken down into three parts and then laid over one another. Maybe this loses something by doing this but for me I'm not sure what I would have gained from seeing the longer version.

Apparently the film is important in an artistic influence sense but I really think that whatever group appreciates this is not a group I will ever be able to join. I took nothing from it and wasn't able to find anything to really grasp onto as a starting point. Even in the context of having spent the morning in an art gallery trying to be open minded to things, I couldn't find space for this. I would love to sound intelligence and art-savvy but WVLNT really just seemed difficult and obscure for the sake of it.

When I was in college I was walking down a hallway at 3AM drinking a cup of coffee. There was an art exhibit on the wall consisting of paper cutouts in various shapes. So I ripped my coffee cup into a weird spiral kind of thing and pinned it up on the art exhibit. It remained there for weeks until the exhibit was taken down. At some point I'm sure that someone probably admired my work. And that basically sums this movie up. Surely nobody could have had art in mind when making it, yet for some reason people seem to infer art from it. And, yet, maybe that's what makes it a great film. Who knows!

I watched Wavelength at film school and was mesmerised by it - I also got fed up with other noisy students who couldn't accept that beauty and truth can be found in the simplest ideas - ie a slow zoom across a loft studio.

If you only want narrative cinema then by all means, go out and get some lunch and come back, and hahaha, it's still zooming. How clever you are, seeing the Emperor's new clothes of avant-garde film. How f**king boring, what a dull, uninspiring attitude to life. Sure, it does seem preposterous at first, but ride that out and get into the merciless logic, and the slightly creepy human actions that occur, plus all of the fantastic colour filters and distortions that keep occurring and you'll find yourself hooked. The final 5 mins are fantastic, as the shot zooms into a picture on the wall of ocean waves and we have left the loft completely.

it's only 45 minutes, not 3 hours - anyone with an interest in experimental cinema should see it. Wish it was on DVD, but i guess it needs to be projected for full effect.