I really hated this film! I am a huge fan of 'pure cinema' as promoted by my favourite director Alfred Hitchcock. I love great cinema whether it is silent, talkie, thriller, comedy, musical or documentary and this film being shot in one continuous take excited me greatly and I watched with huge interest expecting a great piece of film making. I'm afraid I found it extremely poor as a film.
There is no disputing the amazing logistical difficulties the director has overcome to film one continuous take for an entire feature length movie but if I was interested only in logistics I would study the London traffic system or the engineering of the channel tunnel! To be a great or even a good film takes more than logistics.
Even the technical brilliance of filming in one take is reduced these days massively due to digital/video technology. Reels of film only lasted a short time so Hitchcock filmed Rope in long takes but had to cut them cleverly together to give the appearance of the take continuing each time he had to change reels of film. It was impossible to shoot a whole film of feature length on one reel of film. Now anyone could make a film in one take as long as they avoid making a mistake messing up the take.
The only clever thing about this film is that the director has choreographed the movements of groups of people and planned out camera movement etc and managed to film it all without any obvious mistakes. This is pure logistics though, not pure cinema! There is no drama, no characterisation, no humour, no ingenuity of storytelling, it runs like a documentary or video tour. On top of that, the script and acting of the people appearing and the narration are inane and ridiculous. It is at times meant to be funny but is pathetically unfunny and idiotic. There is nothing to recommend this as cinema its only benefit is to show the beautiful building and works of art. This could be done better in a documentary without all the nonsense.
There is nothing I hate more in films than pretentious attempts to be something they are not. I give this 1 1/2 or 2 out of 10 rather than 1 simply for its choreographed movement of camera and people.
There is no disputing the amazing logistical difficulties the director has overcome to film one continuous take for an entire feature length movie but if I was interested only in logistics I would study the London traffic system or the engineering of the channel tunnel! To be a great or even a good film takes more than logistics.
Even the technical brilliance of filming in one take is reduced these days massively due to digital/video technology. Reels of film only lasted a short time so Hitchcock filmed Rope in long takes but had to cut them cleverly together to give the appearance of the take continuing each time he had to change reels of film. It was impossible to shoot a whole film of feature length on one reel of film. Now anyone could make a film in one take as long as they avoid making a mistake messing up the take.
The only clever thing about this film is that the director has choreographed the movements of groups of people and planned out camera movement etc and managed to film it all without any obvious mistakes. This is pure logistics though, not pure cinema! There is no drama, no characterisation, no humour, no ingenuity of storytelling, it runs like a documentary or video tour. On top of that, the script and acting of the people appearing and the narration are inane and ridiculous. It is at times meant to be funny but is pathetically unfunny and idiotic. There is nothing to recommend this as cinema its only benefit is to show the beautiful building and works of art. This could be done better in a documentary without all the nonsense.
There is nothing I hate more in films than pretentious attempts to be something they are not. I give this 1 1/2 or 2 out of 10 rather than 1 simply for its choreographed movement of camera and people.