Hôtel Monterey

Documentary, experimental, call it what you want - this is a ghost story, in which the camera is the ghost, roaming the hallways of a derelict, and perversely beautiful, depopulate hotel in Manhattan. There's a shot here, when Akerman tracks down a dark hallway and towards a window overlooking an empty street at night, which stands as one of the most poignant evocations of the loneliness of the city I think I've ever experienced.

As in Jeanne Dielman, here we have the same startling moments that are startling primarily by dint of being preceded by so much mundane material. As the film develops, the viewer becomes gradually more "liberated" from the confines of the camera and the space it captures. However, I'm making it sound more interesting than it is. Again like JD, I found my patience slipping. I can't really recommend this, or imagine watching it again.

Yup, that sure is a hotel.

Pretty much just a slideshow, but a cool slideshow

Further proof that talking in cinema was a mistake

Distilled cinema. Inhabiting an environment. Structural, chronologic. The connective tissue of time and space. The silence is concentrate.

Akerman está para o cinema, assim como Bashô está para a poesia. Toda essa contemplação e descrição visual presente em Hotel Monterey é o mais próximo do zen que o cinema chegou, mas que nos presenteia com a dualidade nos inspira, para as almas que visualizam cada enquadramento como uma exposição viva a ser mensurada, este filme é uma obra prima, já para as mentes irriquietas que precisam do estímulo caótico das imagens delirantes e verborrágicas, este filme é uma tortura.

For me this succeeds where NEWS FROM HOME fails.