Knight Ridder Newspapers

It’s no coincidence that at a time when movies seem emptier than ever, they also move faster than ever.

This epiphany came while I was contemplating my favorite films of recent weeks. The list included “Shopgirl,” “An Unfinished Life,” “Capote,” “Good Night, and Good Luck” and “Pride & Prejudice.”

It occurred to me that one reason I really liked these pictures was that they are unhurried. They linger lovingly on the human face and form.

This is not to say that they’re static or visually uninteresting or that they’ve been indifferently edited. In fact, they represent an extremely high degree of technical and dramatic excellence.

These movies exude a confidence in the story they’re telling and the actors who bring it to life. They know they have it where it counts. As a result, they can stand up to the audience’s careful scrutiny with no distracting hocus pocus.

And face it … hocus pocus is now the name of the game in Hollywood. I watch the films of many young directors and can’t help thinking that all the camera tricks, f/x and rat-a-tat editing are diversions that keep us from recognizing that the Emperor is stark raving nude.

Too many filmmakers today are like the stage magician who hides the mechanics of his tricks by dazzling us with dancing girls, flashpots and strobe lights. Today’s moviemakers think they have to keep moving lest we discover they have nothing to say.

All this makes for bad movies and lazy moviegoers. What sets film apart from theater (aside from the obvious) is editing and camerawork, both of which provide a point of view that gives a director near total control.

When you see a play you’re staring into a box (the stage) through an invisible wall framed by the proscenium. An actor may be saying his lines, but that doesn’t mean you have to look at him. You can take in the set design, you can turn your attention to the other actors on stage, you can study the costumes and props. In short, you decide what to look at.

In film the director chooses what we look at, whether it’s a vast panorama of armies drawn up on a battlefield or a close up of a human hand. He dictates where the camera is pointed, how a scene is lit, and how the various pieces of film will be assembled for the final cut. We see what he wants.

That’s one of cinema’s strengths. But through misuse it’s become a liability. Today’s hyperactive films with their rapid-fire collision of images encourage us to put our brains on hold and let the avalanche of visual information wash over us.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In the hands of a good director – I’m thinking of Darren Aronofsky’s work on “Requiem for a Dream,” or the action sequences in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” – this can be powerful stuff.

But of course those were films with a good deal on their minds. And most of the films I encounter have nothing on their minds.

When that happens, cinema, this wonderful art form capable of absorbing and synthesizing all other art forms, becomes little more than an amusement park ride.