I'm having trouble with modern editing
Hi.
Just a quick note. I went to see Nolan’s *Odyssey* and really liked the movie—it was epic—but I really regretted that the pacing was too fast, especially the first 40 minutes. I’ve heard complaints about the movie on all sorts of topics: historical inaccuracies (since Homer was accurate ;p), the Bechdel test, etc.
Generally speaking, I’m not a Nolan fan, but this is the first Nolan film that actually stirred up some real emotion in me, and the epic nature of the film left me feeling depressed after the IMAX experience—like I had to come back to reality.
But that’s not the point. Am I one of the few people who have a huge problem with the editing pace of contemporary films? I grew up on European cinema and American film classics. I love the films of Tarr and, of course, Kubrick and Lynch. As a visual artist myself, I’ve made video art pieces that are becoming increasingly hard for my friends to watch—for example, the ones who constantly say they like things to move fast ;p.
I’m not saying every film has to be like Benning’s—whose work I appreciate conceptually—but I really get the impression that the concept of film editing is universally shifting to meet the needs of viewers raised, for example, on TikTok and constantly exposed to multiple screens, multiple screens, and an overload of everything. I missed longer takes in *Odyssey*; in my opinion, long takes let a scene breathe, but contemporary films actually give me a headache. *The Odyssey* is cool in that regard (for the first 40 minutes, I felt like I was watching TikTok, but then it was okay), but I remember watching Eggers’ *Nosferatu*, which I hate—sorry. That movie’s editing was so fast-paced that I had to take a headache pill.
I remember scenes from *Taken* with Neeson ;p, where the guy climbs over a fence and there are 13 cuts in a 3-second scene of him jumping over it—which looked like some kind of parody back then, but today it’s probably a glimpse of the future.
Do any of you also notice and have a problem with the editing speed (I’m not talking about action scenes, but in general) of contemporary films? I’ve come across the term “hyper-editing.” It seems to me that even hyper-editing itself—for example, in *Koyaanisqatsi*, which I love—is already too slow today.
I remember watching *Koyanisqatsi* with friends who complained and had a hard time sitting through the scene with the long shot of the airplane, and even the shots from the “Greed” section didn’t seem particularly fast to them.
I think I have an issue related to my upbringing in cinema, my general patience, and my need for imagery. I have a problem with the speed of editing today. Mainly in American or commercial films—of course, there are still slower films, and there are films where fast editing works well—but I get the impression that it’s being used where it doesn’t fit, because the attention span for moving images has changed in recent years, yet I’m having an increasingly hard time with it. Is there anyone else who has a problem with this?