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Single take. Shit. I'm still watching a single take.
Alfonzo Cuarón has a lot to answer for, that in the digital age, one can attempt to avoid thinking about how best to shoot a scene by simply having it be one take and distracting the director from realizing they don’t know what they’re doing. I mean distracting the audience.
It is to the teensies what a diagonal paper wipe is to 1980s TV news. The principle doesn’t work since the only reason it might is that it could be real which it never is. Re: the bland bloated Birdman, I believe someone was heard to say:
This doesn’t, scratch that, this can’t work because it flaunts its counterfeit. We know it’s concocted. The point of the single take, as Bazin tells us and is right, is the excitement of reality. Birdman, taking place as it does over three days, is de facto fake. Instead of the tension of the increasing moment, we get a gimmick.
