there's no reason to watch an old man chase a pigeon around a room for five minutes. none. first of all, what was the point of it? second, why do we have to witness it in real time? what does that tell us that a one-minute montage wouldn't? there's a reason why God invented these things called cuts. it's so we can watch an old man spend five minutes chasing a pigeon around a room without actually having to spend five real-time minutes watching an old man chase a pigeon around a room. there's a way to advance time in films so as not to waste your audience's time on drawn-out sequences that do nothing to advance the narrative or character development. sequences that exist for no other reason than to wear us down and force us into the same dreary hopelessness as the characters. i don't have time for it. make your point some other way.

and for the record, it's specifically these long takes that i called poorly crafted (the film itself i called "perfectly crafted catnip for snobs"). the first major one, where anne zones out and georges walks from one end of the apartment to the other, kind of worked because there were things happening. problem was, they happened WAY too slowly. a better director would've gotten the point across in half the time. for the most part, haneke's long takes consist of him setting up a camera on a tripod in the corner of a room and sitting on his hands while his characters do nothing interesting for five minutes. i imagine he spent entire days of shooting where all he did was glance up from his cafe au lait every 45 seconds or so to say, "uh-huh. yeah, keep doing that." just because that choice is deliberate doesn't make it good.

"i smack clowns with nouns, punch herbs with verbs..."