Aleksandr Sokurov
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Essentially filmed in one long, two-hour shot, the film—which features the masterful cinematography of living legend Roger Deakins—is a cinematic feat rarely attempted, though not without precedent (Birdman, Rope, and Russian Ark are other examples of one-shot films).
It is not the first time this gimmick was used in a film – Alexander Sokurov’s “Russian Ark” got there earlier in 2002.
These titles include Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, the Best Picture Oscar winner Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), and Russian Ark, the latter actually filmed in one single take rather than just being crafted to appear that way.
There have been a few similar experiments over the years (the breathtaking Russian Ark perhaps being the most famous example), but recent efforts have seen the trick very nearly becoming a genre unto itself.
In 2000, Mike Figgis released the experimental drama Timecode ; two years later Alexander Sokurov made Russian Ark , a lyrical one-take journey through Russian history composed of a single Steadicam sequence shot in almost constant motion that deserves substantial credit as 1917 ’s technical predecessor.
Like "Russian Ark," but fast!
In 2002, Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov created "Russian Ark," a fantastical, 99-minute art-and-history tour of the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, out of a single, flowing, uninterrupted camera shot, a feat made possible only by digital cameras.
Aleksandr Sokurov’s 2002 documentary Russian Ark created an elegant one-shot tour of the Hermitage Museum, but Victoria glides through the night in service of a story.
That’s been done before; back in 2002, during the infancy of the digital film revolution, “Russian Ark” offered a 96-minute take.
That bravura exploit (echoing Alexander Sokurov's documentary "Russian Ark") played out over 22 locations and needed the help of six assistant directors and three sound crews.
Although the most accessible of the director's four features, the drama sometimes waivers between pretension and profundity -- at best recalling the Russian art cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky ("Ivan's Childhood") and Aleksandr Sokurov ("Mother and Son").
Hitchcock (Rope) and Welles (Touch of Evil), Altman (The Player), Scorsese (Goodfellas) and the other masters of the one-take shot were always restrained by the fact that it's physically impossible to record more than twelve continuous minutes of film.
Alfred Hitchcock tried a trick like this with his 1948 film Rope, but -- both then and now -- film reels need to be changed after about 20 minutes.
Patented in Hitchcock's ''Rope'' (1948), the technique was nudged into the baroque realm of hothouse art with the amazing opening shot of Welles' ''Touch of Evil,'' followed by ''GoodFellas,'' the kickoff to every third De Palma film, and so on.
While Rope's technical bravado looks quaint when compared to a recent epic like Russian Ark, and its jaw dropping parade of a hundred extras, it isn't an entirely fair comparison.
One-take filmmaking has been tried before: Alfred Hitchcock attempted a similar stunt with his 1948 thriller "Rope," but he was forced to cheat since he was shooting on film and his cinematographers William V. Skall and Joseph A. Valentine had to reload the camera every 10 minutes.
The only movie I can think of that's like it is Hitchcock's brilliant tour de force, Rope.
Exciting, stimulating, and thoughtful, this part of the film is enlivened by an energetic, wily performance by Issey Ogata (Alexander Sokurov’s The Sun) as the government’s inquisitor, who is in charge of forcing Christians to renounce their religion.
There’s a certain poetry in having Ogata, who so brilliantly portrayed Emperor Hirohito in Aleksandr Sokurov’s The Sun, play a man whose aim is the renunciation of divinity, and Inoue is one of the great cinematic devil’s advocates in recent memory precisely because the film doesn’t present his arguments as devilry.
It's a sometimes unsettling balance: Ogata is something of a Japanese thespian legend – he played Emperor Hirohito in Alexander Sokurov 's The Sun, too– who’s as much famed as a comedian, and he manages occasionally disarming comic effects here.
Even viewers who recognize Ogata from Edward Yang’s “Yi Yi” and Alexander Sokurov’s “The Sun” will be unprepared for the bracing dose of camp he injects into these severe proceedings, with his mock formality and an unnervingly high vocal pitch that suggests a Nipponese Mr. Woodchuck.
Ogata made for a memorably eccentric Hirohito in the Alexander Sokurov film "The Sun" and if he weren't in "Silence," well, "Silence" would be even more daunting and difficult than it is.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
influenced by Russian Ark (2002)
Visuals
The device was perhaps most famously used by Alfred Hitchcock in his 1948 film, “Rope” (though that film does have several hard cuts between reels), and in Alexander Sokurov’s 2002 fantasy, “Russian Ark.”
Though the film – set over a few weeks – is quite clearly not performed as one unending shot a’la Russian Ark, the camera’s dreamy and eventually disorienting observance of Riggan’s unravelling works wonders.
(The single-shot movie to beat still is Russian Ark.) Iñárritu's try-too-hard mode of magical realism can be breathtaking, absolutely, and it also can backfire.
At one point, the two are shown sitting on a bench in front of Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa,” as Napoleon exclaims, “It is me!”
Interestingly, before Hardcore Henry came along, Russia could boast having made the one artistically successful first-person feature: Alexander Sokurov’s 2002 single-take stunt, Russian Ark.
For me, the film ranks with works like Kieslowski’s Double Life of Veronique, Ozu’s Tokyo Story, Kurosawa’s Ran, Kitano’s Hana-bi, Sokurov’s Mother and Son, Malick’s The Tree of Life, or other narrative films in which the visuals are so overwhelming, hypnotic and utterly transcendental that trying to capture much of what the film has to say in words is impossible.
Lanthimos and the great DP Robbie Ryan ( American Honey , Slow West ) conceive a claustrophobic, candle-lit look for The Favourite that evokes Russian Ark and Barry Lyndon if either had been occasionally shot through a fisheye lens.
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
influenced Francofonia (2015)
Sure, their films get small arthouse releases here, and may even show up on Netflix (as has Weerasethakul’s mesmerizing 2010 masterwork Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, presumably to the baffled chagrin of the average Netflix and chill viewer).
Coupled with Kevin Stitt’s complex cutting, Cloverfield is a sustained triumph of expanding and contracting perspectives, its whip-pans from human-scale panic to skyscraper-toppling spectacle raising the bar set by Spielberg’s War of the Worlds—if not Sokurov’s Russian Ark.
Gromov and his men - crude sniper Chvanov (Dmitriy Lysenkov), taciturn Nikiforov (Aleksey Barabash, "Russian Ark"), middle-aged Polyakov (Andrey Smolyakov) and the baby-faced Sergey Astakhov (Sergey Bondarchuk) - take control of a bombed out apartment building on the The Children's Circle Dance Fountain square, Polyakov killing a German threatening what they believe to be a young boy.
It’s far more impressive than the whole mind-numbing 96-minute single-take of Russian Ark (2002).
It’s a question that was elegantly addressed last year in Volker Schlöndorff’s excellent Diplomacy, and is here reworked by Sokurov as the starting point of a meditation rather than the quest for an answer.
As with the complicit relationship between another French cultural figure and another Nazi described in Volker Schlöndorff's 2014 film, Diplomacy, Jaujard (played by Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) and Wolff-Metternich (Benjamin Utzerath) were enemies on paper.
You can find a more straightforward telling of this story in the 2009 documentary “The Rape of Europa” (and, presumably, in the recent French television documentary about Jaujard, “Illustrious Yet Unknown” ).
Few directors have attempted to probe, even transgress the boundaries of technology and visuality as Lynch does here, and even those who have — like Sokurov in last year’s The Sun — have seldom done so in such an aggressive and systematic manner.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Directed by Michel Gondry
influenced by Russian Ark (2002)
Human Nature is almost as reckless and funny as the pair's next team effort -- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- is deeply painful; as both of them explore the same field -- "love" is the main driver of everything we do -- I only marvel at their versatility.
Made in Britain, exquisitely shot by the French cameraman Bruno Delbonnel (who lit Amelie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Sokurov's Faust ) and beautifully designed by Burton's regular collaborator, Rick Heinrichs, Dark Shadows is a visual delight.
The final result lands somewhere between Dante's Inferno, with Custine acting as the Virgilian guide, the slipstream transference of Midnight in Paris , and the weirdest amusement park ride of all time.