Refusing to cut

In Recommending Shoplifters I wrote that we as audience are trapped together with the mother in the interrogation scene towards the end. I think I really like things like that, where I’m trapped by the movie to sit through an intense and complex web of emotions. Neon Genesis Evangelion does that too with its last two episodes. I don’t know what was going on or really what emotions to feel, but I felt them intensely. I felt like I couldn’t move, shouldn’t move, that I had an obligation to pour my undivided focus to whatever was happening on screen. I think the Shoplifters scene was much clearer for me in terms of the legibility of emotions, but I felt trapped in the same way. This is a scene where I should shut up and watch.

I feel like these moments have to be somewhat experimental to work, or at least the ones I can think of right now are. Shoplifters uses the mugshot angle, and refuses to cut away from it. Eva uses some experimental psychadelic imagery in the last two episodes, but before that it has a lot of still shots where nothing is moving and nobody is saying anything. These are probably there because of time constraints in the production, but it I think they made something great under those constraints. It puts a lot of tension in me, and traps me. It would be awkward to say something in the silence, and talking would break it. Did the player freeze? How long is this going to go on for? Will I have dispelled some magic if I check if the video is still playing? It puts everything in suspension and makes me unsure of what to do, thoughts racing between the video player, the social situation around me, and what it means diagetically inside the show. Why are the characters just standing there? Why don’t they talk to each other? What are they feeling? Such thoughts get time and nourishment to flourish in these moments where the camera refuses to cut away.