Victoriia

Hello dear reader, yes I’m back again and yes, I know. There was a gap of about two months before yesterday’s post and here I am with my second offering in less than twenty four hours. The reason for this as you probably guessed from the nice and shiny poster above, is all down to a film called Victoria. Now this blog is going to be a first for a couple of reasons. Namely it will be the first time I’ve ever blogged about a film I didn’t watch at the cinema and equally important. It’s a first because I’m really not going to tell you that much about it, for reasons I shall explain shortly. 

Victoria is a film that first came to my attention in February of this year and when I read its premise it instantly went on my must watch list. It was made in the early hours of the 27th of April 2014. Now, when I say made in the early hours of the 27th of April, I do mean the entire film. You see the reason Victoria peaked my interest is simple. It has a running time of 136 minutes or just over two and a quarter hours long if you want it in imperial and it’s all one shot. Now when I say one shot, I mean one shot. There’s not clever editing or special effects, what you watch from beginning to end is one cameraman filming the entire movie. This accomplishment is made more impressive when you realise that the film starts in a night club and by the time it’s concluded we’ve been on the top of apartment blocks, witnessed fights on street corners and also been put right in the middle of a bank robbery. Other films have had long shots in them. Robert Altman’s The Player has an opening shot that lasts over eight and a half minutes and Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity beats that by four minutes but I’ve never seen a film that was entirely just one shot and no edits. 

Victoria has a director that you’re unlikely to have heard of, Sebastian Schipper. Its cast is also small and full of actors you probably won’t have seen anywhere else, although I suspect we will be seeing Laia Costa, who plays Victoria in a lot more over the coming years. Don’t let the fact that this is a film that has probably slipped under your radar put you off watching it. As I said in the beginning I’m not going to elaborate on the plot, more than I already have. I think it’s probably better going into this film without expectation or prior knowledge of what will take place.  All I will say is this. I took three attempts to film Victoria and what we, the paying audience, see is the third take. It’s set in Berlin but is has large parts of English dialogue in it. So much so that it was disqualified for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language. I sometimes recommend films, in these blogs as being worth a watch but Victoria is the first time I think I’ve ever written that a film should fall into the ‘must watch’ category. As it’s a relatively new film it’s unlikely to be available on Netflix or Amazon Prime yet but when it is, set aside an evening to watch it. It’s nothing short of astonishing. Also, PSA. If you have photo sensitive epilepsy, skip the first two minutes of the film. It won’t impact the story in any way, shape or form. 

One girl. One City. One City. One Take.