• Home
  • Meetings
  • Events
  • Blog
  • E-Board
  • Around Boston
NUFEC
.

Ben Garbow on Victoria

10/23/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Victoria is German heist movie about a Spanish woman who teams up with a group of local Berliners to rob a bank. The movie shows the lead up, the heist, and the aftermath. Sounds like a good movie, right? Interesting, if a little clichéd, premise. Here’s the thing, though. Victoria has a trick up its sleeve, and it’s a hell of a trick.

The entire movie was shot in a single, more than two hours long, unbroken take. No edits, no CGI, no Birdman tricks. One unbroken shot lasting the entire film.

Due to that fact alone, Victoria is an amazing achievement. The amount of planning, coordination, and skill required to pull off something this ambitious is mind-boggling. (Victoria is only the sixth feature film to try such a feat, and is the longest one-shot film to date by almost 20 minutes. It supposedly took three attempts to film.) The camera weaves through streets, down alleyways, in and out of cars, in low light and bright pulsing clubs, peering over ledges at just the right moment to capture a key bit of action. It’s incredible to watch. It’s also a testament to the cast’s stellar acting that I briefly forgot that the unbroken take was still going.

Victoria herself acts as a conduit for the audience, an avatar character the camera always follows around, so we always see the action from her point of view. Limiting the camera’s view in some cases and sticking with a faux handheld filming style—not quite found footage, but jerky at parts—adds a great deal of immediacy to the events that unfold over the course of the film. It’s as if the audience is another player in the film, another character getting dragged along on the increasingly dangerous ride. A sense of urgency permeates through the whole film. Part of it is because of the story, and part of it is secretly hoping an actor won’t mess up and ruin the whole take.

Much like how Birdman used the single shot conceit to underscore the story of a live Broadway performance, Victoria uses an even more impressive parlor trick to emphasize its story. A heist film lends itself well to be shot in a continuous take. Just as a heist or a bank robbery needs to have a plan, meticulously and carefully thought out and executed, so too does the entire movie. If even one actor misses their mark, the whole thing is kaput. It adds an underlying feeling of tension to the whole movie, a feeling that at any moment something could go wrong. It’s really unbelievable—it has to be seen to be believed.

The few areas that suffer in service to the central editing trick are story and pacing. The story, like mentioned briefly earlier, is a fairly standard run of the mill heist story. I was never really surprised by anything that happened in Victoria, which isn’t the worst thing in the world, but is still a bit disappointing. There’s also some pacing acrobatics, mainly to justify the whole story taking place over two hours in real time. Action happens pretty rapidly, and some events that take place, namely the transitions and motivations for their occurrence, just aren’t realistic. Real people would never do these things this quickly.

But you know what? I didn’t really care. I didn’t care that I predicted almost everything that happened in Victoria, or that certain plot elements were sped way up to justify everything happening in real time. I was so mesmerized by the immediacy of it all, the fantastic camera work, the excellent acting. Victoria is a hell of a ride and an unbelievable achievement in filmmaking.

Grade: B


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    AJ Martin
    Andy Robinson
    Anime
    Anthony Formicola
    Anu Gulati
    Arjun Agarwal
    Arzu Martinez
    Ben Garbow
    Brandon Isaacson
    Brian Hamilton
    Carter Sigl
    Dan Simeone
    Discussion
    Elizabeth Johnson Wilson
    Eliza Rosenberry
    Emily Fisler
    Erick Sanchez
    Eric Tatar
    Essays
    Festivals
    Gabrielle Ulubay
    Grace Phalon
    Haley Emerson
    Here's Some Movies
    Ian Wolff
    IFF Boston
    IFFBoston 2015
    Interviews
    Isaac Feldberg
    Kunal Asarsa
    Library
    Lists
    Marguerite Darcy
    Marissa Marchese
    Marli Dorn
    Mary Tobin
    Meghan Murphy
    Mike Muse
    Mitch Macro
    Neel Shah
    Netflix Instant Watch
    Parth Parekh
    Patrick Roos
    Profiles
    Reviews
    Short Films
    Television
    This Week In Movies
    Tyler Rosini

    Want to Write for Us?

    Contact NUFEC at [email protected] if you're interested in writing for this blog!

    Archives

    October 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    April 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    October 2019
    September 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.