I told Miyazaki I love the “gratuitous motion” in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are. We have a word for that in Japanese, he said. It’s called ma. Emptiness. It’s there intentionally. Is that like the “pillow words” that separate phrases in Japanese poetry? I don’t think it’s like the pillow word. He clapped his hands three or four times. The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb. — Roger Ebert, on Hayao Miyazaki
Posted on: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 12:26:31 +0000
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