It's suffocating (I'd never considered how liberating edits were from a complete immersion into a film) and at times unbearably tense — and though some will point to
the airlessness of Hitch's Rope or the fluid choreography of Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark, The Silent House is a different beast altogether.
Not exact matches
If there's a certain
airlessness to Folman's live - action aesthetic and a tendency to over-egg some
of the speeches, it does set up a kind
of artificial, sci - fi - ish tone early on, even in this, the least fantastical part
of the film.
Chris Menges» cinematography — with its customary emphasis on landscape (stark), the texture
of buildings (rust, peeling paint), and even the air (or
airlessness)-- undercuts the melodrama, and Caro coaxes exquisitely nuanced performances from her actors.
Coppola's films often strike me as too manicured, with every shot feeling artfully composed to the point
of airlessness, but in The Virgin Suicides, her aesthetic fits perfectly.