(The Basterds)
Director: Amat Escalante
Year: 2008
Writers: Amat and Martín Escalante
Cinematographer: Matthew Uhry
I felt like the script was written in spanish and poorly translated to english for the english speaking actors, especially bad script for the Karen character played by Nina Zavarin, who did not pull off her character at all. I don't know how much to blame the actor, the script, or the director for that, but I was very distracted at times by certain word choices that don't seem natural for a native english speaker.
The style of long slow takes works alright for me, seemingly taking from directors like the Dardenne Brothers or Michael Haneke, but the problem you face with a slowly edited film with few shots is that you expose your choices as director to deeper scrutiny because you are making so few of them, you must show a lot of confidence in each angle, each bit of information in the frame and each actor's performance. The actors really have to deliver on the realism in this style of film, and here, they didn't.
Still, I liked the premise. I would be interested to see more work from this director, hopefully he can perfect this style of filmmaking so that he can pull off this kind of story.
If you want to see masterpieces of a similar tone see: Michael Haneke's "Caché" or "The Son" by the Dardenne Brothers.
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