Passionless Moments

The later-much-more-recognizable-and-flat-out-acclaimed female filmmaker Jane Campion started her career making semi-obscure-but-still-notable short films, and this is one of the earliest and likely best examples of said films. 'Passionless Moments' is a film that straightforwardly depicts a few minor and mostly inconsequential awkward occurrences that are often entirely within the characters' minds. The film is quirky and queer, but there is something uniquely "bland" about the style, which isn't to say the film isn't visually interesting (there's one brilliant little moment in which Campion makes something as minor as lint blowing above a man's head seem like some sort of mystical, mythical moment of magic; it's super simple and brief but is hands down by far my favorite part of the (short) film), but that just the overall manner in which everything is handled is very quiet and quaint. There is virtually no soundtrack, not a single line of actual dialogue, and the narrator is nearly monotone in his narration. The film is often humorous, but ends with a super somber sort of feeling. A unique and intelligent arthouse film.

A remarkable first short film by a student (or fresh out of film school) - as much for the script as anything else. I happened to see it on TV as a teenager and then made various other people watch it too when I spotted it coming round again.

The film simply shows a series of short quirky moments in people's everyday lives. For example, a man stretches his arm as he wanders out of his house, and this gesture is mistaken by a neighbour who thinks he's waving at him.

Quirky moments such as these have since become the stuff of observational comedy, except that the ones depicted here are so small that they would pass quite unnoticed if not isolated and commented on by this film.

Various individuals going about their days, suffer distracted moments in which they think ridiculous, amusing, or ordinary thoughts.

Jane Campion's early short subject offers us brief glimpses into the thoughts of people, none of which are particularly unusual. A small boy turns an errand into a world-saving moment; a woman eating sliced ham thinks about her uncle's pig; and so forth. It's an exercise in boredom, and the creativity it engenders... most of which isn't worth pursuing, although I've been on world-saving missions too, and so have you.

If there is a serious point to this movie (and I'm not sure there is), it's that a certain amount of boredom is necessary. Boredom impels us to relieve the boredom, boredom allows our minds to roam, boredom makes us write reviews of movies on the IMDb -- 7000+ and counting, as I type these words. Do they make a difference to anyone?

Probably not.

Campion and Lee had the audience roaring at their look of everyday moments we take for granted. The narrator's deadpan voice adds a nice sardonic touch. My favorites were the man singing "that 70's song about cleaning up jeans," and the little girl with the tissue box. An amusing little film, made suddenly poignant by the narrator's last voice over - approximately 'there are over one billion moments in a neighborhood, and most of them are gone before we realise it.'

Each of the segments is so simple, yet Campion displays a great deal of ingenuity for being able to not overlook such mundane aspects of human nature. As idiosyncratic as the events may be, they are still very much normal. I think this is what makes the ideas seem so amazing, is that they are the product of mere observation, of using the everyday events of the real world to make a film.

I loved the part about cleaning the jeans. That was just hilarious.