Everybody, once in their lives, will find a film that bores the life out of them. It's no crime.
I myself fell asleep to this one the first time I watched it (it was 4 am, though I must say). But with repeated viewings, and after giving meaning to each question asked during the interrogation, I found the tediousness to be actually necessary.
After all, Depardieu's character is himself bored out of his mind and can't even understand why he's there or why he's being held and interrogated, so now I feel that the excruciating length of the interrogation and the seemingly pointlessness of the questions asked actually helped me see the whole thing better through the clueless prisoner's point of view.
It also boosts the confusion in Onoff's head as to why he's being detained, making the story even more intriguing, though a bit heavy to sit through.
But yes, I can see why one could get bored to death watching this. At least you didn't hate it altogether, which probably means that, if you decide one day to get back to it, you could experience the same sort of fulfillment I did. I hope so, sincerely, because A Pure Formality has become one of my favorite films only after repeated viewings, and I hope it will happen to you as well.
As to the other films you mentioned, I haven't watched Final Approach, but I saw and loved Jacob's Ladder, and your pointing out the similarity (twist ending) between the two is an interesting thought. Although, I have to say, I felt like Tornatore did a better job at confusing the audience by hiding out the clues to what the truth is a bit better than Adrian Lyne did in his film. Jacob's Ladder was no mystery to me at all, as it was pretty clear to me, a mere 30 minutes in the film, that the Tim Robbins character was dying, while hallucinating on the drug the whole platoon was on, and trying to hold his grasp on memories and earthly connections in his final hour. So, when the ending came, and it was a great ending, it didn't really come as a surprise to me. But with this movie, for some reason, the ending came as a big shock, and the confusion stayed with me until after the end credits rolled, probably because of the earthly setting, and the pronounced humanity of the supporting characters.
Finally, I didn't think much of The Sixth Sense at all. It felt like an absurdity altogether. The twist ending, instead of shocking me or making me appreciate more what I watched, made me almost nauseous I wanted to throw up. The stupidity of each situation the Willis character found himself in, and the reasons why he wouldn't understand that he was dead, when explained, made the film unbearable to me. It was not the man's denial of having died, but the all the little, absurd coincidences (the wife's response at the dinner table, or even more the very reason why she would go to a restaurant and sit there alone, then leave before the meal got there, above all) that made the twist ending in The Sixth Sense feel nothing more than a childish trick, rather than a story-telling device, and ruined for me a film that could have been more than decent. At the very least, that is one thing that A Pure Formality does way better, as in it does not exploit editing as a story-telling device to the point of ridiculous, but it rather keeps the mystery hidden in the main character's head, until the end, rather than building it through improbable situations and impossible dialogues. Just my thoughts.
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