One of the more common complaints I hear lobbied toward certain films is that they’re “boring.” I think, sometimes, this can be true: when a film is terribly paced, when it fails to grab your attention at all, that’s certainly an indictment of the filmmaking. But, more often than not, I hear this complaint directed at movies that are simply much longer and slower paced than we’re used to, regardless of the quality. I think it’s an unfair criticism.
I won’t make the claim that people haven’t always been bored by long, unconventional movies. But I do believe — given that our attention spans are, on average, getting shorter — our modern reliance on short-form gratification, through social media platforms that offer just that, has only made this matter worse. The inability to appreciate art because it doesn’t immediately activate the desired chemicals in your brain is a genuinely worrisome issue. In our contemporary world, it’s become nearly, if not totally, impossible to really deal with this on a massive scale.
So, while this is hardly an individualist issue, I think it’s worth reflecting on one’s own habits and attempting to alter them accordingly. Call it slowmaxxing, if you will, or simply a conscious appreciation of beauty in all its forms. These tips here are specifically to do with watching movies, but think of them as applying to every part of your life.
Deliberately challenge yourself.
This can, and should, apply to every sort of art you engage with: read books that need footnotes and make you look up certain terms, watch films that take some time to settle in, listen to music outside of your usual genres. One of the greatest things about having the cognitive ability to reason and problem-solve, is our boundless curiosity. There’s nothing inherently wrong with re-watching your comfort movies, but there is genuine pleasure in discovering something new and learning from it.
This might look like watching foreign films, seeking out stuff from before the late 20th century, attempting to decipher projects that totally upend what film can be and what it can do. It’s so easy to dismiss these movies as “boring,” but their unwillingness to immediately trigger your dopamine receptors is precisely the point. Instead of shrugging them off right away, use the opportunity to ask yourself why the movie hasn’t engaged you? Is it a legitimate fault on the filmmaker’s behalf, is it an intentional creative decision or is it a reflection of our inability to properly embrace boredom or inactivity?
For example, recently I’ve been watching a lot of silent films. Some of these — like, say, “Nosferatu” — are over a hundred years old and, obviously, don’t work the way movies work now. But consider the fact that the so-called Modern Era began in the late 1400s. These films are not ancient artifacts. Human history is vast and the existence of the moving image is but a tiny section of the timeline. Watching even the oldest film isn’t as distancing an experience as one would think.
Your phone is your worst enemy. Treat it as such.
I get it. It’s easy to have your phone right next to you when you’re watching a movie at home and it’s easy to check it every time you get a notification. It’s not like you’re in a theater or anything, right? Nobody’s going to yell at you for it. I’m not going to get on a high horse here and pretend like I’m not also guilty of this. But I think it’s important to consider this question:
Why do I need to look at my phone when I’m watching a movie? Isn’t the fact of the movie itself entertainment enough?
I’ve been considering this a lot recently. We live in a world of intense stimulation, where instant gratification is at our fingertips literally whenever we want it. This has translated to our perception of the role of art: that is, that art can, and therefore must, captivate our reward systems. But, as I’ve already mentioned, this needn’t necessarily be the case. Some of the best movies, books and music I’ve ever watched, read or listened to have been those which decidedly bypassed the pleasure principle.
We naturally experience a massive range of negative and positive emotions, and there’s value in each and every one of them. When you’re failing to really watch a movie because you’re looking at your phone, you’re not just missing out on the plot — you’re missing out on the gamut of emotional response that the picture’s specifically designed to trigger.
Take some time to think about a film after you watch it.
Look, I love Letterboxd as much as anyone. I think it’s a fantastic resource for people to express their genuine love of movies and to share that with others. But there’s also something detrimental about treating film purely as something to log on an app to watch an imaginary number tick up as the year goes on. Watching several movies a day and writing a quippy one-liner for every one of them just to amass followers and “prove” you’re a “Real Cinephile” is antithetical to the entire purpose of engaging with art in the first place.
The other side of this is that logging in this way does actually help some people discover new things. I have a massive watchlist on Letterboxd that is full of films I probably never would’ve heard about without using the app. That’s the beauty of the internet age; one doesn’t need to browse the library or videostore shelf just looking for cool DVD covers anymore. That being said, it’s important to resist the urge to reach for your phone as soon as a movie ends so you can log it online and immediately forget about it. Instead, take the time to really think about what you just watched, whether and why you liked it or not.
This doesn’t mean you have to be a film critic or know everything about the practice of filmmaking. But everybody, regardless of their knowledge of the creative process, can have an informed and meaningful opinion on art. And these opinions are only built by engaging with more art more slowly, rather than going from one thing to the other to keep yourself entertained.
