A lot of people talk about The Master and There Will Be Blood, they are masterpieces and I’m not here to deny it and in fact, The Master is my best film of the last decade along with Portrait of a Lady On Fire but I find the first three films of PTA lot more interesting to look at from technical perspective and I learned a lot from these films and it helped me to understand his film language too.
The thing about long takes is it’s so tough to get them right. If you have more characters especially in motion the blocking becomes complex and if you have them in motion, the fluidity of the shot goes for a toss, it’s hard to get desired composition right, sometimes the director should compromise with the angles, there are timing problems, the actors shouldn’t fuck up their lines so a lot of rehearsals should be done and the complexity of them keeps on increasing if you add more and more layers and it becomes a nightmare to pull off. Despite these risks and the cost involved here if a director decides to go for a single take shot, it’s definitely more than just a gimmick and they believe it adds something to the storytelling and in doing so enhancing the film viewing experience (I’m only talking about films that makes sense here lol).
As long as these takes add value to storytelling and character establishment I just don’t mind people saying he’s just ripping off from Scorsese or Jonathan Demme because look what PTA achieves here with these long takes :
1) Sydney – The camera follows Philip Baker Hall from the front, goes across other people in the casino, tracks back to follow him again, and then settles when he finally stops to play. This 70 secs shot alone makes so much sense of what he does and how the casino is part of his life.
2) Boogie Nights – The camera stays too short on characters, not more than 15 secs for us to remember any of them and it just keeps on moving. There are two things here :
a) this is a simple way to introduce as many characters as possible within a short duration.
b) it’s just a night club you meet a lot of unknown people there and when you wake up the next morning you don’t remember shit and this 171 secs long take signifies exactly that and creates that restlessness and mood of a nightclub.
3) Magnolia – This long take is a lot more interesting than the other two, the movement here doesn’t have any meaning, it’s almost senseless but that’s how the atmosphere of TV studios will be, right? and it just captures the urgency of a TV studio before air time (some Network(1976) influences here) besides the cinematography being a meta to film’s screenplay and providing some crucial information via dialogues.
Thanks for reading. Cheers.
CiNeMA ReTroSpecT 