Actual
messes have no patterns but our
brains innately create them. When I was a kid I was obsessed with
emulating Ralph Steadman's gonzotic frenzies; I'd try to go against
my own internal algorithms by painstakingly drawing every sloshy oblong sprinkle with a pencil because splattering actual ink somehow felt
like 'cheating.' I still look at some of those old drawings and get
annoyed at how equally-sized or symmetrical my constructed splotches are.
Uncut Gems
is the most seamlessly edited movie I've
seen in the last ten years. It might not seem that way since it's so
chaotic and intense but it's next-to-fucking-impossible to fabricate
chaos and the Safdie Brothers are the Gods Of Anxiety who make it
happen. I don't want to sit up and say
Gems is 'realistic' because every movie feels like a movie to me now,
gone are the days where I forget that I'm watching one. But while Gems
has movie moments, the editing is its greatest recourse to tearing down
the artifice and investing me like I'm watching something real.
It opens with one of the most inspired disguised cuts I've ever seen and from that point on there's nothing clever about its surgical embroidery. The Safdies' collaborator, Ronald Bronstein, said their approach was to make the editing "invisible" and "to remove all direct signs of control and craft from the process." What makes it even more impressive is how the environments they're cutting around are so bustling and alive; the pings and dings of text alerts that are completely irrelevant to us, conversations that drown while others come up for air, and intimidating threats in the background that mute the noise altogether. To some this makes the movie cacophonous and unbearable but I'm legless until the credits roll.
While this approach to editing makes the movie intoxicating, it's also a sobering alternative to the dated sensationalism of long-take tracking shots. If we're going by the notion of tracking shots functioning as human sight, then when do we blink? In editing, that's where. Of course a movie can be edited to death but a cut doesn't remind me that I'm watching a movie as much as a camera's fluid, unflinching gaze does.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love the docu-drama camera at the end of Children Of Men; the blood on the lens makes it feel like a war photographer in the shit; the camera itself a character and not a surrogate for lenticular POV. And the raid sequence-shot in Season 1 of True Detective not only serves a narrative function but it's possibly the best thing to happen to TV in the 2010s.
Where I draw issue is within movies like 1917, Creed, Atomic Blonde, et. all modern blockbusters trying to pull off sequence shots and failing because their attempts to 'disguise' the cuts are hideously obvious. Even if it's pulled off well, either by putting in the work or with well-hidden cuts, it's not impressive anymore, it's just expensive choreographed masturbation. Writing about The Knick, Matt Zoller-Seitz referred to Soderbergh's long takes as "what film geeks call a 'stealth oner' — a one-take scene that’s so subtly executed that you may not notice the lack of cuts until you watch it a second time."
But that's what every one-take shot should be: Not calling attention to what it's doing but tricking you into not even realizing it's happening in the first place.
It opens with one of the most inspired disguised cuts I've ever seen and from that point on there's nothing clever about its surgical embroidery. The Safdies' collaborator, Ronald Bronstein, said their approach was to make the editing "invisible" and "to remove all direct signs of control and craft from the process." What makes it even more impressive is how the environments they're cutting around are so bustling and alive; the pings and dings of text alerts that are completely irrelevant to us, conversations that drown while others come up for air, and intimidating threats in the background that mute the noise altogether. To some this makes the movie cacophonous and unbearable but I'm legless until the credits roll.
While this approach to editing makes the movie intoxicating, it's also a sobering alternative to the dated sensationalism of long-take tracking shots. If we're going by the notion of tracking shots functioning as human sight, then when do we blink? In editing, that's where. Of course a movie can be edited to death but a cut doesn't remind me that I'm watching a movie as much as a camera's fluid, unflinching gaze does.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love the docu-drama camera at the end of Children Of Men; the blood on the lens makes it feel like a war photographer in the shit; the camera itself a character and not a surrogate for lenticular POV. And the raid sequence-shot in Season 1 of True Detective not only serves a narrative function but it's possibly the best thing to happen to TV in the 2010s.
Where I draw issue is within movies like 1917, Creed, Atomic Blonde, et. all modern blockbusters trying to pull off sequence shots and failing because their attempts to 'disguise' the cuts are hideously obvious. Even if it's pulled off well, either by putting in the work or with well-hidden cuts, it's not impressive anymore, it's just expensive choreographed masturbation. Writing about The Knick, Matt Zoller-Seitz referred to Soderbergh's long takes as "what film geeks call a 'stealth oner' — a one-take scene that’s so subtly executed that you may not notice the lack of cuts until you watch it a second time."
But that's what every one-take shot should be: Not calling attention to what it's doing but tricking you into not even realizing it's happening in the first place.
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