Readers, Readers

If, for a long time, painting has made of contemplation and silence of worn-out characters reading a scene of genre, cinema has rarely practiced it, except for purposes of intrigue (deciphering a letter, etc.: a piece of information) always subjected to narration. These portraits gathered by James Benning belong to this finely selected production of reading time, free of other motives. Quite familiar with landscape views, here are, this time, three women and a man silently reading: animating themselves. What he and they are reading is never indifferent, and what we find out by the end of each sequence is what movement is: excitement – that is to say, cinema. (JPR)