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I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

If you dragged a person off the street, then showed them this movie, chances are they wouldn't like it. They'd probably find it to be extremely boring, and might even fall asleep. But, for experimental film lovers, and fans of the films of avant-garde filmmaker Chantal Akerman, there is some enjoyment of this hour long look at a cheap New York hotel and those who are staying there.There is no sound, no characters, only images. It is like a Stan Brakhage film, but much slower. The camera usually stays stationary, and, when it moves, it moves very slowly and steadily. These images require a lot of patience from the viewer, even those who are already used to very slow, very experimental films. Some of the shots in this film are 5 minutes of hardly anything happening! But, I did find a lot of interesting things in the film.The shots of this hotel are quite beautiful, and the camera movements are very creative, so, overall I'd definitely recommend it to fans of slow, experimental films. Anybody else should probably stay away.

Hotel Monterey (1972) *** (out of 4)I'll admit that I had never heard of this Belgium film before it showed up on the wee hours of the morning on Turner Classic Movies. Even the plot description on my cable service was blank, which is just about right because there's very little "story" in this fascinating documentary. For 63-minutes director Akerman films various aspects of a New York hotel. We get footage of some of the people staying there. Other footage of the hallways as well as a few looks at the rooms there. You might wonder how on Earth any of this is entertaining and half way through the film I started to ask myself why I was so drawn into what I was watching considering there wasn't really anything to watch. There's no even anything to listen to as the film was shot silent so there's no dialogue, no score, nothing. I think what makes the film so entertaining is that you normally watch a movie and wait for the next thing to happen. This happens over and over until the movie is over yet that's not what happens here because you see a single image for fifteen to ninety-seconds and then it just goes to another random image. I think this works because while you're watching and studying one of these images your brain is pretty much preparing you for "what's going to happen next" but when that next thing happens your brain pretty much has to start over with studying the image and again going into the "what's going to happen" mode. I thought the film was extremely entertaining, although I'm sure most are going to grow bored within a matter of minutes. If someone did turn this off after a few minutes I can't say I'd blame them as this isn't a mass appeal movie. I think the ones I'd recommend this to the most are fans of Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING because it's clear this movie was a major influence on that 1980 masterpiece. There are several tracking shots of the camera going down the halls and around corners, which of course was a major aspect of the Kubrick film. There's also a few shots of the elevators that will remind people of the Kubrick film and just check out how some of the people are shot and again you'll think of THE SHINING.

Clearly influenced by Warhol Zeitgeist (remember it's 1972), Chantal Ackerman's Hotel Monterey is a study in empty headed documentary, eschewing key elements in favor of some provocatively mundane images and scenes that are laboriously drawn on but say next to nothing beyond the obvious. How Akerman, who had made nothing but shorts up to this point, deemed this worth cutting upward to an hour is mystifying since it's clear it is going nowhere after fifteen. But plod on she does. Located in lower Manhattan the dark semi polished Monterey is populated by dignified if somewhat down at the heels men and women. Tidy little old ladies throw butts on the floor while glum slow moving gentlemen eye the camera suspiciously as they meet in the halls and the elevator. Some folks pose and smile others peer through a crack of the door betrayed by a shaft of light. Welcome to the Hotel Monterey.Ackerman strives for minimalism over realism with fractured imagery and long tedious shots and slow zooms of the bleak setting omitting sound and titles. No narration, no interviews, no music score and most importantly no ambient sound which amputates both mood and impact. She simply moves about the hotel filming surface and offering no depth or insight. This may have well been her intention but I see it as a missed opportunity at a more substantive documentary that would have been more informative and interesting by involving other senses instead of self indulgent MOS camera work of tawdry hallways that are not allowed to be heard. By the time you check out of Hotel Monterey you'll probably need a good night's sleep.

What's it like to live in an aging New York hotel. Most movies would weave a story into the precincts and turn the film into entertainment. Or, if more literally minded, maybe a documentary would result where denizens tell their stories to the camera. An artier approach, on the other hand, might juxtapose selected images into some kind of symbolic narrative that stimulates the imagination. This one-of-a-kind movie, however, does none of these, resulting in an approach unlike I, for one, have ever seen.For the first half of the hour-plus, a static camera lingers on a particular hotel interior for as much as 90-seconds per scene, creating a rather disturbing sensation as we wait for the frame to change at the expected movie tempo (they don't call them "movies" for nothing). But, contrary to expectation, there is no movement, except for an occasional shadowy figure moving quickly in and out of the static frame. The camera, however, doesn't follow the figure in expected movie fashion, but instead stays fixed on the vacated part of the hotel interior. It's the vacancy of the frame that's being emphasized here, not the transient human occupants who seemingly come and go in an indistinct, anonymous manner. And since the entire film is soundless, the disorienting effect is compounded.In a later segment, the camera begins a super-slow dolly down succeeding hotel corridors, each closely walled in by a narrowness illuminated only by hotel lighting with dim pools of light and shadow. The effect is to create a sense of claustrophobic confinement and unease. These empty corridor shots are emphasized throughout, tunneling our vision onto some kind of obscurely defined distance. The overall effect of both these main movie parts is of textures or what might be called a fabric of vacancy, confinement and impersonality, at least that's what I'm getting from the filmmakers' exotic technique. The last part presents views from the roof (I think) in super-slow camera pans, resulting in a somewhat panoramic picture of the New York skyline, and a dehumanized one it is, that is, until the camera bends to a street scene below showing cars in motion, but too far removed to reveal real pedestrians. (I'm not sure if this final reveal needs a "spoiler alert"!) The cars too are confined, in this case by narrow city streets, suggesting an application of the hotel corridors to the outside world, as well.A couple of frames are worth noting. One lingers on an aging, well-dressed man sitting alone in a hotel room. He's perfectly still for the entire time as if he too is part of the furnishings. It's the only time a full figure is revealed and made a subject. I assume he's the room's occupant and emblematic of the hotel as it once was. The other is a dimly lit corridor frame, blackened at the far end, until, that is, a door opens briefly, but we can't tell why. This occurs a number of times at odd intervals for no apparent reason. In most contexts, such mysterious events would be spooky. Here, the openings and closings are more curious than spooky, as if the neighbors down the hall are beyond our reach.All in all, I'm not sure what to say about the film or its odd technique. Neither are easy ones to like, but then I don't think the movie was made to please. My guess is that the object is to provoke in an odd way an experience of what living in the hotel is like for its apparently lonely residents. The sequence of frames does follow a kind of spatial narrative as we transition from lobby to roof, even if it is at glacial speed. The effect can also be rather hypnotic as I, for one, began to study those mundane little details of walls, hallways, rooms, ordinarily overlooked in everyday life. In that sense, the technique opens up a fresh look at a common background dimension.No, it's not a film for everyone, and I have no idea where it would be shown except maybe at film schools. Nonetheless, I think TCM should be congratulated for making such film curiosities available to a broader audience who stand to be provoked by the experience. I know I was.