Slow and Behold: On Pacing, Patience, and Taste

Several days ago, before I got distracted by the Michael Mann film now on the world’s TV screens 24/7, I was at work on a response to this essay by my pal Dan Kois in the New York Times Magazine. Dan’s piece discusses his newfound skepticism over what he calls “aspirational viewing” – watching certain films and TV shows (among others. he singles out Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, the 2008 Kazakh shepherd film Tulpan, and HBO’s Treme) because of a need to feel like a more sophisticated viewer. “As I get older,” he says, “I find I’m suffering from a kind of culture fatigue and have less interest in eating my cultural vegetables, no matter how good they may be for me.”

Why I Love "Indulgent" Films

I’m not one of those writers who likes to fuss over his phrasing, and I’m definitely not one of those writers who likes to come up with what he’s going to say ahead of time (in fact, I’m more the opposite – the kind of writer who comes up with something interesting to say long after he’s already filed his review), but years ago I came up with an expression I really hoped I could one day use in a review. It was inspired by some of the initial reviews coming out of Cannes about Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046. They all seemed to suggest that the film was: 1.) gorgeous and 2.) impenetrably indulgent. I hadn’t seen it, obviously, but for some reason these words flashed across my brain: