/lit/ - Literature

>>16611201
People can watch things however they want, but Bela Tarr has expressed that the film is meant to be watched in one sitting, like a normal film. It's a very different experience to shut something down and go do something else before you continue it. Television caters to that sort of viewership. Film does not.
And if they're good, films absolutely do not go off into tangents. It may delve into something that doesn't seem to pertain directly to the main action, but this movement is carefully measured and performs a vital role in the film's underlying cinematic gesture. Because at the heart of cinema is not the writing. A film's story floats at the surface. The film's gesture is the brine that rests underneath.
For the contrast, look at Moby Dick. In one chapter Melville takes a break from the action and gives a lecture on Cetology. It's brilliant in a book, very intellectually stimulating. But if you where to put in the middle of a film adaptation of the book, it would fall apart. "When are they getting back to the good stuff?"
This is a consequence of cinema being a wholly different entity to writing. Where words on a page can only delve into your soul through intellectual stimulation- passing completely through your conscious mind- a film has, through your eyes and ears, a direct route into your subconscious.

>I also think truly engaging tv shows can have the same absorbing effect as their cinematic counterpart, sometimes even more so because the longer structure lets you go much deeper and explore more intensely the characters and themes.
I'm sorry to say it but I absolutely despise this sort of mentality. At the root of it is the notion that "More = Better." With no room left for the endless bounds of human imagination. I don't need to know every conversation, every affair, every conflict in a character's life. I don't need every minute happening within the storyline painstakingly laid out, as if to omit such details would leave me slack-jawed and scratching forehead head like some sniveling moron. I only need what I need. Nothing more, nothing less.
There's a /pol/ meme, and it's mostly carried as an all-purpose catchphrase for shutting down dissidents, but I think it carries some truth; "Brevity is the soul of wit." To quote Terry Davis, an idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity.