EITHER/BOTH Sparse OR/AND Abundant?

“Most movies lean towards you and fight for your attention. Others lean away.” - Paul Schrader (Screenwriter and/or director of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Dog Eat Dog, First Reformed)

In light of Kelly Reichardt’s upcoming film First Cow, I began rewatching Old Joy (her second feature) and it dawned on me… Kelly Reichardt is an auteur. 

Her world is not for everyone. Distinguishing her films as separate worlds is like deciding which HEB location is best. I fucking love Riverside but it’s too far away so I settle for South Congress. Occasionally, I make the trip up to booshy Mueller just to discover new things in the area and maybe take a stroll around the pond. If you are hyper aware of the whys and wherefores of your HEB habits then you’re probably a Kelly Reichardt fan. All of her films are subtle portrayals of the same themes and characters despite weaving through various genres and settings. I often rewatch her 2014 dramatic thriller Night Moves just to see Jesse Eisenberg’s rage percolating behind a contemptuous gaze at the lack of agency against environmental collapse. Eisenberg’s performance in Night Moves is an example of Reichardt’s constructed moments of micro-expressions that serve in place of dialogue. Reichardt’s characters are like real people in that truth reveals itself candidly and is hardly ever articulated verbally. This lack of verbal competence of her characters may be the lightest burden Reichardt asks of her audience, and the heaviest lift in terms of moviegoer patience. It’s subtle. So so so subtle. If you miss these uniquely Reichardtian moments, the film loses meaning and devolves into televised golf or a Tarkovsky film—whatever your version of dead time. I like Tarkovsky but can admit to zoning out now and then during Stalker.

I love all types of films and Kelly Reichardt just so happens to be my jam this past week but I saw that Kingpin is streaming on Netflix… Bill Murray in a toupee with that rose embalmed bowling ball… pretty…. pretty…. pretty good. (insert Larry David gif here). Instead, I rewatched Old Joy AGAIN followed by Gus Van Sant’s film Gerry and only now I can see things that went over my head the first time I watched these two similar films. Oddly enough, I just finished reading Paul Schrader’s “Transcendental Style in Film” and in my somewhat manic state that comes in cycles (Gemini) I SEE ALL THE CONNECTIONS MAN! Schrader attributes his transcendental theory to the films of Yasujirō Ozu, Robert Bresson, and Theodore Dreyer—all of which are a huge influence on Kelly Reichardt and Gus Van Sant and tonally similar to Old Joy and Gerry. 

In his book, Schrader comes up with two categories of films (see above quote) and two gears—sparseness & abundance. For Schrader, these two shifts in speed render a film unpopular or popular with the average moviegoer. It sounds a little confusing and no one wants to read someone else’s idea of how to watch movies but I think Paul Schrader did a lot of hard work coming up with this fairly simple axiom. He asks to what degree is a film sparse or abundant in its storytelling techniques? Schrader says “In cinema, over-sparse films cannot sustain an audience because they are too sparse too quick. An over-sparse film does not allow the viewer to progress from abundant to sparse means. It requires too much of her, demanding instant stasis, and drives her figuratively (often literally) from the theater.” (pg. 166) Schrader is chiming in on the perpetual argument of art vs entertainment and the evolving attention span of the moviegoer. He goes on to state that the most effective over-sparse film he’s aware of is Michael Snow’s Wavelength. Can you sit through this?

He doesn’t condemn or belittle the over-sparse, only suggesting that filmmakers who ditch abundant techniques (narrative structure, plot, character development, dialogue…etc) expect the audience to have the same special knowledge and commitment of past achievements in film and art to appreciate innovation. Schrader says that most art films begin sparse and the artists accept the abundance as given in order to work more and more sparsely. I think I’ve written the word sparse too many times already, but I still have more to go… Schrader’s theory helped me understand my relationship to these two films as an audience member and reinvigorates my admiration of Reichardt and Van Sant’s storytelling talent. 

I will spare you the synopsis and spoilers. I’m only concerned with the style of these two filmmakers. Gerry has a similar premise to Old Joy, yet takes a drastically different thematic approach to male relationships. Both films contain… sparse… static camera shots and rich subtext, but where Reichardt gives more back to the viewer in abundance, Van Sant strips away with sparseness. Gus Van Sant is known for a number of great popular films over the past few decades but Gerry is not one of them. Why? I like Paul Schrader’s defense as to why some films resonate while others get lost in the Walmart DVD bin. Gerry is slow and painfully sparse. Jesus Christ it’s fucking sparse. With a slightly mushy/ripe Rotten Tomatoes score of 61%, Gerry rests on the fence of divided critical acclaim and audience apathy. 

In the summer of 2001, Gus Van Sant took Matt Damon and Casey Affleck out to Death Valley just a couple months shy of 9/11. The world was a different place when Gerry premiered months later. The idea of two handsome Hollywood movie stars wandering around in the desert may not have been attractive to Americans at that time. In terms of Schrader’s theory, Gerry suffers from over-sparseness with a runtime of 103 minutes and only 100 shots, which means each shot is around a minute long. Despite this, it’s comical. I think it’s really funny. Funny in the weird way where you only laugh while watching with someone else. Like Reichardt, Van Sant uses dialogue sparsely as texture and comedy instead of exposition. Matt Damon and Casey Affleck speak non-sense half the runtime. They sound like two old cooks who have outlasted generations of restaurant staff, rehashing inside jokes from the past.

A pivotal scene mirrored in both films is a campfire chat before bed. In Old Joy, the two protagonists (Mark & Kurt) stare into the fire while they restlessly shoot aluminum cans with an air powered pistol. Kurt, the more talkative of the two, rattles off stoner logic until exhausting his effort to keep their mutual vulnerability at bay. The raw helplessness that suddenly and shockingly, outpours from Kurt catches Mark off guard. Kurt’s honesty gives Mark the opportunity to reciprocate but instead, Mark retreats into complacency. This is a Reichardtian moment and arguably her best. 

In Gerry, Matt Damon and Casey Affleck smoke cigarettes while gazing into their campfire. Unlike Mark and Kurt, they’ve spent all day trying to find their way back to the car and got lost. After a long seemingly contemplative moment, Casey Affleck mutters lines from a movie or mutual acquaintance. Matt Damon laughs and finishes the line of which they both find pretty damn funny. I’ve tried but still can’t figure out what Casey Affleck says. It’s meaningless. In the context of Schrader’s film theory, in this decisive moment Van Sant tightens his grip on the audience and Reichardt loosens up a bit. Both filmmakers are operating within the same school of thought but Reichardt’s effort turned out to be a notch in the lexicon of her very specific vision. Gus Van Sant went on to make many more films, all of which veer from the slow pace and brooding mood of Gerry. These two films are brilliant studies of male bonding and offer a side of masculinity that is underrepresented in popular culture. 

I’ve gushed enough. In conclusion, are your favorite films either abundant or sparse? Or are they both sparse and abundant? IDK… I think I will watch Gerry again before getting around to Kingpin. Matt Damon and Casey Affleck arguing over shameful animal mating rituals never gets old. I love hearing Casey Affleck’s nasally tenor voice say “mountain-top scatter-about”, “dirt mattress”, “rendezvous”, and “crows-nesting”.