This week I found myself watching two movies on complete opposite sides of the spectrum: Victoria, and 13th. I had done some research on Victoria before watching it and discovered that it was a one-take movie, meaning (perhaps obvious to some) that they filmed it all in one “take” or shot. This is extremely impressive from a technical point of view, and first came to the limelight with Birdman a couple years ago. I was excited to see how well they executed it. The second movie, 13th, is a Netflix documentary that had been in my queue for a while, but was recently added to my “1001 Movies to watch before you die list”, so I decided that this would also be a good next film.
Victoria ended up being fairly disappointing for me. I felt that they did a good job technically with the one-shot take, but it felt like the actors’ character portrayals lost something as a result. There was a good, long buildup to the action part of the movie, but then it was over quickly and felt as though it dragged as Victoria and her group of friends struggled to escape. Overall, however, it was a fairly enjoyable plot, but had some confusing and unnecessary scenes thrown in.
13th, on the other hand, I absolutely loved. This is a documentary on the prison system and how it came to be that “the U.S. holds only 5% of the world’s population, but holds more than 20% of the world’s prisoners”. 13th takes you on an engrossing historic tour of how the prison system changed and grew into what it is today, but also addresses the issue of the 13th Amendment which states “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States”. In this film, multiple academics and scholars argue that the prison system has taken advantage of this aspect of the 13th Amendment. The entire film is filled with discussions and narrative that make you question what you knew (or thought you knew) about the system. As a whole, I thought it was extremely well put together as well as engaging for the entirety of the message.
Feel free to comment with your thoughts or suggestions, or follow along yourself at https://letterboxd.com/peterstanley/list/1001-movies-you-must-see-before-you-die/ .
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