Good walking scenes in other films ?!?

Thanks rooprect. ive seen russian ark, thats a good point, i guess it is pretty much the ultimate walking scene in terms of duration at least.

Lake Tahoe I'll look into, thanks for that.

In terms of opening film shot walking scenes, this must be the winner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33C65V9JdbE

By the way rooprect, its only recent Van Sant films that are influcenced by Tarr. Gerry is the first. He must have had a binge and watched a load before making that one. Elephant that he made straight after is also very much full of slow quiet steadicam walking scenes.

Ahhh the wonders of a good walking scene. Let me try to answer your question JackBluegrass.

I asked this question in short to hopefully discover other films of the type I personally prefer. However let me answer in more detail..

Inspired by the films of Bela Tarr as personally, for me a walking scene is synonymous with an entirely different kind of film making. If your going to include scenes of walking (and I mean walking largely uncut between locations and not some kind of sped up MTV collage representing walking) then it would suggest a certain kind of film making and that's the kind i'm most interested in.

I'm very uninterested in formulaic Hollywood films and the idea of showing a character going from A to B is completely at odds with the conventions of mainstream cinema. Its the very first thing your meant to cut according to the unwritten rules of commercial film making. Maybe not so unwritten though; im sure Syd Field and other script writer gurus have probably directly stated such things at various points.

Life moves very fast and hardly anything moves faster than visual media; TV, music videos and film. However some film outside of very commercial cinema does give us the chance to see the world at a slower pace.

A walking scene is a perfect example to me of something that would represent a film more interested in engaging with a viewer, requiring their active participation in order to glean things from the scene (and hopefully much of the rest of the film as well).

If a director thinks we the audience can learn something by showing us this moment of the characters lives that is so ordinary and yet equally so rarely shown within film then that sounds like the kind of film I want to watch.

-
So why include walking scenes?

Every second of a film doesn't have to progress a narrative. Film can also just show us the world and engage with us and scenes that allow us to look, to browse and search within them can be highly rewarding I find.

I also think as you seem to suggest that a location has the ability to be a character within a film. And so if thats the case, why can't a scene of human characters walking through a "location" character reveal much about it? Do the characters have to continually drive a narrative in that scene as the walk? I don't think so.

Most of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's films are set in the jungle and we are given the time in those films to develop a real sensitivity to this environment through his slow meditative film making. This all comes through being fully imersed into it. We aren't told about the jungle once in dialogue. I don't think he does walking scenes per-se but why couldn't walking through that location give us a much greater understanding of it?

Walking scenes can be for very practical reasons that a director chooses to inform us about a location, in order for us to understand the influence of that location upon the human characters within it.

Also to refer to Werkmeister Harmonies by Bela Tarr, the walking scene in this film is very unusual, a one off almost as far as im aware. Totally without dialogue or any obvious narrative progression Tarr uses this moment to try and provoke us into thinking about what is going on inside the heads of the two characters as we follow them in real close up side on.

In the scenes prior to this walking scene Janosk has at last persuaded György Eszter to leave his house and respond to the demand of local residents that he should address all the trouble apparently going on in the town. It's the first time he's left the house in god knows how long and aside from the wild speculation, rumours and fear being reported he has also just been blackmailed by his wife. This along with Janosk's worries are not discussed at all in this scene and instead we follow them in silence, given the time to imagine what they are thinking, which isn't so hard knowing the position both characters are in at that moment. Its a scene that on the surface seems devoid of any content and purpose and yet for me its fantastic and highly rewarding within the context of the films greater narrative.

Paris Texas? Haven't seen it for ages, so the amount that Harry Dean Stanton's character actually walks may be distorted in my memory.

[deleted]