Watching the quiet movies

There is a new Kelly Reichardt film out there in the wild, so we've already got the inevitable reviews moaning about how slow it is, and the more hot takes I see talking like that, the more I really want to see it, because I love the slow cinema.

Getting copious amounts of plot and dialogue thrown at you doesn't make great cinema, and is often detrimental to it. Movies need to breathe, and don't have to rush through everything, they can indulge in time and mood instead.

Besides, most of these complaints about that kind of movie are factually incorrect - saying 'nothing happens' just because you're not getting spoon-fed everything says a lot more about the complainer than the film itself.

Look at Perfect Days, Wim Wenders' wonderful ode to the cleaning of Tokyo's public toilets -  the main character barely speaks a word for most of the running time, but there is a lot going on. The way Hirayama buys his morning drink from the vending machine, or the music he chooses for his morning drive, it all speaks multitudes in a way no dialogue could ever capture.

There's one part where Hirayama is filling in for the unreliable Takashi and a kid comes along and is obviously playing a long-term game with the flaky worker, and is visibly shaken when it's the older man instead. There is a whole other movie in that tiny interaction.

My wife hates Jim Jarmusch films because she thinks they have got their heads up their arses, and because nothing happens, but I adore the slow pace of all his films. Night on Earth has heartbreak and comedy and everything about the human condition, and literally half the film is a car driving around dark streets, and the most dramatic part of Patterson is finding out what the deal with the letterbox is.

It feels like you should be able to get away with paying less attention to these films, but you've really got to focus, or you'll miss the crucial moment. And when Hirayama's face breaks into a million different emotions at the end of his story, it's worth a million plot twists and turns.