The seriousness of 'slow cinema' is reconfigured as superfluity in Kevin Jerome Everson's Park Lanes, the attentiveness it requires replaced by a casual regard for the process of consuming art. Even the process of creating art is distorted by this film, the incidental rendered as valid, the illusion of it rendered even the only validity in Park Lanes' production. If this is what film could or even should be, then perhaps this is merely the mediocre seed of a majestic forest of films to come; for today, it's majestic in itself. Surrendering to the rhythm of reality has rarely been captured so compellingly - watching this film will represent a new experience even for those accustomed to extended runtimes (Park Lanes lasts 480 minutes) due to Everson's intention to recreate an average working day for American factory labourers. His mise-en-scene actually encourages interruption of thought, even of the viewer's presence, such that the act of daydreaming becomes an integral component in the fabric of the film. It's part coping mechanism - the necessity of such testament to the success of Everson's scenario - part product of an experience that's so genuine and so immersive that it circles around and becomes simultaneously distancing. The plainness of Everson's images, edited with great acuity and filmed with a perfect unfussiness, is plain in its instruction, blankly informing the viewer of exactly how to react, awakening one to the essentiality of the act of observation just in noticing as much. We query how much of what we deduce is our own projection, like the daydreams we're freely permitted to indulge in, and made aware of our awareness and our inawareness, the action and the inaction of the filmmaking, the processes of working and playing, the universality of what is achieved in Park Lanes through so singular and decontextualised yet so expansive a project.
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