Ambient cinema has its roots in the modernist cinema of artists such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Andrei Tarkovsky or Yasujiro Ozu. This kind of filmmaking had its revival in the work of many postmodern authors at the end of the century. This may have come from the lectures of Ihab Hassan's on postmodern fiction. His vision of the literature of silence was an answer to the dying breed of modernism, new blood at the end of an exhausting century.
There came the need for a brand new narrative: dehumanised, deconstructed, but not negative. Rather, this new narrative is affirmative as it's a fight with rationalism and a heroic approach to individualism. This silence is a method to derealize the rational world, with the end product being anti-art. No transcendence, no enlightenment – only nonsense, brutal boredom and the endless void.
Taken from Taste of Cinema's list.
