Stillness in the Moving Image

Stillness in the moving image is something of an oxymoron. It’s also an illusion: with the shutter speed operating at an average of 24 frames per second, it’s an artificially constructed perception of stasis. There is always motion in cinema.

But that’s what makes the sensation of stillness so alluring: it provides a respite from this constant movement. In a medium predicated on speed and technological advancements, it is almost an invitation to rest, to think, and to find serenity. It’s for this reason that, when the camera does stop moving, focusing on a single object or a solitary face, it can be utterly transfixing.

I often feel like there’s too much movement in contemporary cinema. With modern gadgets, new technology, and over 100 years of cinematic techniques to build upon, it feels as though some filmmakers today strive to impress their audience with the sheer number of ways they can move a camera. Or, at least, create the impression of movement; VFX has exacerbated the trend of excessive motion.

However, in doing this, we’re denied the opportunity to embrace the nature of cinema’s roots: photography. In the early days of filmmaking, it was not writing that was championed as the foundation of the medium, but the art of photography—how does one capture an image in the most beautiful way possible? How can a filmmaker convey an idea, a thought, or an emotion with only a single image?

It should not come as a surprise then that many of cinema’s most iconic images are characterised by their stillness. The angelic bench scene from Manhattan (1979). The unsettling image of a priest standing outside a cursed house in The Exorcist (1973), wondering if he can salvage a young girl’s soul. Renée Jeanne Falconetti’s teary visage in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), and Judd Nelson’s iconic fist-pump in The Breakfast Club (1985), held in freeze-frame so that we might reflect on the immense personal significance of this moment.

The best filmmakers employ both static and moving pictures with equal aplomb. Stanley Kubrick, for instance, was heralded for the cinematography in his films, and he would argue it was due to the years he spent as a photographer: “To make a film entirely by yourself, which initially I did, you may not have to know very much about anything else, but you must know about photography.”  

Kubrick’s films were so spellbinding because he knew how and when to move the camera. Additionally, he knew why to keep it still. One of the most famous shots from his chilling horror film The Shining (1980) features a tracking shot of Danny cycling around the corridors of the haunted Overlook Hotel. It represented a leap forward in cinema, as it was one of the earliest films to utilise a Steadicam mount, with few from this period using it to such immersive effect.

However, though the film was praised for its revolutionary use of movement, one of the film’s most powerful—and terrifying—scenes is almost completely still. When Danny (Danny Lloyd) walks into the bedroom to check on his father, Jack (Jack Nicholson), he’s practically catatonic, staring into the void. The static camera unnerves us in a way that’s different to the tracking shot: there’s nothing else for us to look at, besides the man going psychotically insane as his frightened son sits on his lap: “I want you to like it here. I wish we could stay here forever… and ever… and ever.”

Uneasy, Danny asks, “Dad… you would never hurt mommy or me, would you?” Jack’s eyes narrow into an accusing squint: “What do you mean? Did your mother ever say that to you?” And then, after more than two minutes of uninterrupted stasis, the camera cuts to a different angle. Immediately, we feel the shift in mood and the increase in tension. More than anything, this shot reveals the importance of stillness in cinema: it makes movement important, drawing the viewer’s eyes to see things that operate underneath the surface.

Kubrick’s favourite director, whom he referred to as the greatest filmmaker of his day, was Ingmar Bergman, another visual artist who prioritised the use of stillness. In The Seventh Seal (1957), one of the most iconic shots in the history of cinema is a static one: Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), a medieval knight, plays chess on the beach with the Grim Reaper (Bengt Ekerot), the conclusion of which will decide Antonius’ fate.

In the same year, Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957) was released. We watch as Professor Isak Borg (played by renowned Swedish filmmaker Victor Sjöström) looks back over his life, questioning his choices and reliving some of his deepest regrets. It is in the still close-ups of Isak’s meditative face that we are allowed the opportunity to reflect on the film’s central themes. In these silent, slow moments, the film demands introspection.

It was for cinema like this that led filmmaker and critic Paul Schrader to label Bergman as a contemplative stylist who, along with filmmakers such as Alain Resnais, Kenzo Mizoguchi, and Roberto Rossellini, was one of the great “observers of life.” And I’d argue that it was through the quietly slow shots that we can see Bergman’s observations best.

However, there is one filmmaker who was perhaps even better than Bergman at communicating life’s greatest questions through stillness: Yasujirō Ozu. There is something completely transcendental about Ozu’s filmmaking style, and undoubtedly his static camera has much to do with that. It creates a serene tranquillity that few other visual artists have ever been able to match. And due to the utterly unique aspect of this stasis, many have questioned what the stillness in Ozu’s cinema symbolises.

So what is the absence of movement in Ozu’s work conveying? While it could be nothing at all, many have reflected on how the static nature of Ozu’s camerawork reflects his thematic intentions. In his book, Transcendental Cinema, Paul Schrader dedicates a lot of thought to understanding the stillness in Ozu’s cinema. Primarily, he describes it as mirroring tenets of Zen art, such as mu, meaning negation: “The basic principle of Zen art is the first koan of Zen, mu, the concept of negation, emptiness, and void. Emptiness, silence, and stillness are positive elements in Zen art, and represent presence rather than the absence of something.”

If we look at Ozu’s most renowned work Tokyo Story (1953), which professional directors voted as the best film of all time in Sight and Sound’s 2012 poll, we can see how the composition of shots reflects this line of thinking. Ozu lingers for long periods in empty spaces, with a still camera and a silent background: an empty living room, a lone chair, and an abandoned street.

These objects take on a subtly portentous significance. They defy the traditional rules of filmmaking, rules which Ozu essentially rewrote. There’s no apparent reason for Ozu to cut to a vase, a tree, or the skyline—so why does he do it? Therefore, if we want to comprehend the importance of stillness in Ozu’s cinema, we must first understand his use of the pillow shot.

He calls these innovative changes to form “pillow-shots” because he judges them to be similar to the pillow-words. Also known as makurakotoba, it’s a stylistic trait of classical Japanese poetry from the Heian Period, stock epithets and adjectives that tend to serve a decorative function rather than modifying the meaning of the nouns to which they are appended. This perfectly describes the pillow shot: they serve no functional purpose. They don’t bridge to a new scene, nor do they reveal the location of subsequent action. Instead, they are merely moments of total stillness, opportunities to reflect on life as it passes us by.   

Mark Cousins elaborates on this in his book The Story of Film: “What is seen on screen is neither the character looking, nor is it Ozu looking, but it is the world looking. The story stops flowing; there is a moment of graceful abstraction.” By imparting pure stillness in a world dominated by movement, Ozu essentially causes us to reflect on our mortality; in line with Buddhist thought, this stasis brings us back to the here and now, the constant and inalienable present moment.

In Donald Richie’s seminal 1963 essay, Yasujirō Ozu—The Syntax of His Films, he describes how this stillness causes the past to evaporate in Ozu’s films: “His characters […] are living in the now, and they have no history. When a person dies in Ozu’s world (which is often) he is merely and instantly gone.”

In the sublime Late Spring (1949), the deceased mother is never once mentioned, and in Tokyo Story, the dead similarly become fragments of a distant past, one that must be forgotten: “The past barely exists in Ozu. Tokyo Story is about the natural advisability of forgetting the dead.”

Perhaps this is the best way of reading the stillness in Ozu’s moving imagery: as an assured, contemplative dedication to the now. In both Late Spring and Tokyo Story, characters sit on a beach and watch the horizon, the waves coming in and out. Things are shown to be in constant flux, yet amidst this unceasing movement, there’s a sublime aspect of stillness and tranquillity.

We cannot sense movement without stillness. As Alan Watts so often spoke about polarity, he famously quipped: “Black implies white.” All of these sequences—from Kubrick to Bergman, and from Dreyer to Ozu—function because of the lack of motion in an art form that is built upon it. We’re allowed to reflect on what we’re being shown: movement implies stillness, and within stasis lies the capacity for great change—the camera could cut at any moment, leaving us on the edge of our seat with nothing more than a close-up.

As change is the foundation of any good drama, we can see that, in holding a shot for as long as possible, there exists the potential to heighten the drama. A prolonged shot of a drugged-up Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) in Boogie Nights (1997) renders me anxious because I’m not sure what he’s going to do next, nor why the camera is fixated on a man doing nothing. Wim Wenders’ sublime final shot in Perfect Days (2023), of a man wrestling his internal emotions, works because we’re given space to engage with his feelings alongside him.

In Tokyo Story, a man musing on his uncertain future in oppressive calm feels all the more powerful because of the lack of motion present: as he processes great change in a vacuum of quiet, his experience is imparted onto us without the use of words. For all of our newfangled filmmaking technology, it is a photographic medium at its core. It should come as no surprise, then, that it’s only in appreciating stillness that movement (and therefore, change) can remain important.