This German film really pushes the boundaries of when a film should finish. Many times you feel like standing up and going home feeling fully satisfied of what you've just watched but,in the words of Steven Ross (Bob Ross' son) they 'pull a sneaky one on ya' and the film just continues to run.
However, this film is genius and impressive in many aspects. The whole film is shot in one continuous shot. Sometimes you can be so immersed that you completely forget that, not only does it bring a genuine fear of tension, but it does it without cutting. In a way that makes it better than other action movies that heavily rely on multiple quick cuts to keep the pace and tension. One of the best parts of the film is where Victoria (Laia Costa) drives the men she's just met to a meet up that Boxer (Franz Rogowski) has been called to attend, The film suddenly transitions from a slow burning romantic film to making the audience feel 'Shits just got real' . This worked especially well as what's about to happen is only briefly mentioned in the scene prior (in the coffee shop) and joyfully joked about in the car ride over by Blinker (Burak Yigit) exclaiming 'I'm finally going to meet a real gangster'. All this slow build up underplays what's about to happen. Therefore making the shot of Victoria driving the car down into the car park, revealing a henchmen wielding a shotgun, that much better. It's unexpected. If the whole film up to that point was Boxer, Sonne (Frederick Lau), Fuß (Max Mauff) and Blinker discussing the what is actually going on, moreover the trouble that Boxer is in with the gangsters, then the scene would just be another, expected scene. Not the critical point of the film that it actually is. Retrospectively looking at some parts that I didn't like as I was watching, the initial roof scene as I thought it was a lot of nothing and didn't need to be that long, I realise it was an essential scene to subvert expectations for later on in the film. A subtle, but clever thing the film also does is put the audience into the shoes Victoria and make every decision/ reaction she has also make the audience feel that that is how they would react to the different situations. A prime example of this is that whenever Victoria and the gang gets into the car, Boxer has to hot wire the car (because it's stolen) as Victoria doesn't know how to do it. When Boxer does it you (the audience) and Victoria never actually see how he does it. This comes back later in the film when the gang are robbing the bank and the car turns off and Victoria can't turn it back on (as she doesn't know how). Panic ensues. This scene is also a particular important scene as both you and Victoria feel the weight of the situation and that weight only gets heavier when you/ Victoria don't know how to get the car to start. In conclusion, just like Victoria's night out, the film was entertaining but should of finished earlier than it did.
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For all it's beautiful shots throughout the running time, the wafer-thin personalities of the main characters offset all the good points the film has.
Holly's (Sissy Spacek) monotone voice gets really tiresome as she narrates for the film. The lack of any sort of emotion however does work in brief blips. In the scene where Kit (Martin Sheen) is hunting for fish, Holly narrates, voicing her opinion, that sometimes she wishes that Kit would fall over and drown, works nicely with her deadpan delivery and strangely makes the scene quite ominous. But these brief blips are exactly that, brief blips. The actual story line is very simple yet directionless, and that can be fine. But I feel the people that were writing it, (its a fictional story but it is loosely based on the killing spree of Charles Starkweather), do have to have a direction for the story. An example of this is the of filling in on some of the plot holes having to be explained through Holly's narration. It sometimes feel that they went through the shots after filming and someone points out 'whats this all about' or 'why did this happen'. This is where Holly comes in and even then some of the explanations she gives feel half-arsed. 'Kit never told me why he did this'. What? That's like the equivalent of 'and it was all a dream' level of creative writing. The writers for Kit's parts also seemed to have been suffering writers block at some parts. Kit just kills indiscriminately for no reason apart from 'That's just how Kit is' and 'Cause he's on the run'. If that was true, then why did he not kill the wealthy man and the maid. A rebuttal to that could be that locking them in the cupboard was enough. But then why did he shot the boy and the girl when they showed up to Cato's farm even after Kit locked them in some form of cellar. In film, when the audience are introduced to a minor piece of information it should come back later (see Chekhov's Gun) otherwise, what was the point of showing it, The shots of it being shown, then become meaningless. So why in the film was there the whole interaction between Kit and the person who shows up to the wealthy mans house and what was on the letter that Kit was given which subsequently, Kit put in the massive vase. That was around five minutes of movie which could of being used more efficiently. The contents of the note could be revealed to the audience that the person who showed up was some sort of undercover cop going after Kit or something like that. But he wasn't. The note, for all we know, could of just been a clever way to pass Martin Sheen his next set of lines. In conclusion, just like Kit's killing spree, the film felt rather unnecessary. |
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