Long Takes: A Lesson of Endurance from Ben Hoover on Vimeo.
"In my video, I look at how The Revenant use long takes or "oners" to telegraph the struggles of the characters. Academy Award winning director Alejandro Inurritu is familiar with long takes to show elaborate sequences from his previous film Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)which was filmed to look like only one take for the entire movie. The Revenant doesn’t try to attempt the same feat, but it uses long takes to capture all the actions and emotions of the characters. These "oners" are particularly used in the fight scenes, I focus on the inciting bear attack and the final confrontation between Hugh Glass and John Fitzgerald, but the opening Native American attack also features long takes, and show every movement and strike. In contrast, many contemporary action films will film and edit fights to hide punches and impacts. When paired with “shaky” camera and fast editing also common in action movies, these fights can sometimes be difficult to watch and see what is happening. Showing The Revenant’s fight sequences in full (with some speeding up)in the video allows my audience to see how long these takes are and how the camera captures the action; every slash, kick, stab, bite are clearly presented. When I first saw The Revenant, I remember feeling cold, I remember feeling pain. The long takes force the audience to sit with the characters and endure what they experience. Brian Tallerico from RogerEbert.com opens his review of The Revenant with, “Great film has the power to convey the unimaginable. We sit in the comfort of a darkened theater or our living room and watch protagonists suffer through physical and emotional pain that most of us can’t really comprehend. Too often, these endurance tests feel manipulative or, even worse, false...You don’t just watch ‘The Revenant,’you experience it.”I wanted to understand why this movie more than any other made me feel that way. I realized it was the "oners" that put me in that condition, it put me in the wilderness with the characters without breaking away from them. Some shots are up to five minutes long before cutting to the next one. While it would be impractical to show some of these sequences in their entirety for my video, I use voiceover over selected clips to try to convey the same experience."