Victoria
A unique example of filmmaking.
To shoot a film in a single shot sounds like an unattainable feat; many have tried to simulate it (notably Hitchcock’s Rope in 1948, and last year’s Best Picture winner Birdman) but few have actually managed to pull it off. Victoria is certainly one of the best, and the longest, to have succeeded.
It starts in the pulsating darkness of a Berlin club where Spanish woman Victoria is on her own, dancing and drunk. She falls in with a gang of four men and follows them up to a rooftop. Despite the situation it feels completely innocent: the men, with names like Sonne, Boxer and Blinker, are proud and childlike, brothers in arms. Later it is revealed that Boxer is an ex-con and has been asked to steal €10,000 from a nearby bank as payment for the prison protection he received. One of the gang passes out and Victoria is roped in as the getaway driver.
There are scenes where the dialogue simply fades away and Nils Frahm’s neo-classical score comes in to beautiful effect, creating tonal shifts of such complex emotion that it’s hard to turn away. Are we supposed to feel for these bank robbers? Of course we are. Just like Victoria we follow the events without pause, without any time for proper moral consideration.
Victoria’s single shot is not a gimmick: its characters come first. It’s technically brilliant – there’s a reason why cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen is credited before the director – but it is not an obstruction and it is never self-congratulatory; as the camera dogs the group through Berlin streets it circles and weaves, sometimes as if pushing them forward, but there are long sections where it’s easy to forget what we’re watching. Relentless and wonderfully acted (most of the dialogue was improvised), Victoria was shot between 4:30 AM to 7:00 AM on 27 April 2014 and is one of only three versions made – it is a unique example of filmmaking.
9/10
