Journey to the West

A monk in a red robe walks through Marseille. The walk is so slow that one step takes close to a minute while the city continues around him at normal speed. Part of Tsai Ming-liang's Walker series, the film consists of roughly fifteen very long, mostly static shots. Lee Kang-sheng is the monk and Denis Lavant is a man who at some point begins to imitate him. The whole idea is the difference in speed: on the metro, on stairs, in a shopping arcade, people go past, some look, some do not register him at all. There is almost no dialogue. It screened at the Berlin Film Festival and runs about an hour. Who it is for: viewers who like slow cinema and work that makes duration the subject. Who it is not for: anyone expecting narrative, which this refuses entirely.