I’ll admit: When I bought a ticket to see “Victoria” in 2015, I was drawn to the theater primarily by the one-take selling point prominently featured in the film’s trailers. I’ve always had a huge soft spot for directors who demonstrate their directing talent with extended, overlong takes. Despite “Birdman,” which came out the same year, I found it hard to believe that someone had made a functioning 130-minute film without any large-scale editing.
But actually: “Victoria” is the absolute pinnacle for planned series fetishists like me. After several months of rehearsals with the cast and crew, German filmmaker Sebastian Schipper ran his crazy project three times and finally made his finished film from the final run. And actually as a continuous stream of images and not with tricks or disguised cuts as in the aforementioned ‘Birdman’ or the equally impressive ‘1917’ from 2019.
However, “Victoria” (currently available to stream with a subscription to Netflix or Paramount+) is so much more than “just” a one-take masterful exercise…
Symbiosis of form and content
In fact, I have rarely seen (or rather experienced) a film in which form and content go so hand in hand as in ‘Victoria’. The extraordinary staging is not just a gimmick, but rather serves as an ideal means for director Schipper to take me as a viewer into a hypnotic Berlin night and a rollercoaster of emotions in real time.
First of all, there is the desire to simply drop into the city at night with all its possibilities and exciting encounters. When the title character (starring with an endearing presence: Laia Costa) strolls through the streets after a wild party with four guys (including the perfectly cast Frederick Lau and Franz Rogowski), I just want to join them – and I can. which, thanks to the feeling of being in the middle of things, is also very good for the screen or screen.
However, the fact that the carefree drifting will not last soon lurks in the background as an ominous possibility. When the criminal involvement of Victoria’s new acquaintances finally escalates the situation, I’m always so caught up in the film’s unstoppable energetic pull that the eventual mood change hits me with full force.
A journey that you first have to recover from
This intense emotional roller coaster, this film-like rush, makes ‘Victoria’ one of these special worksthat everyone should have seen, but which I can only look at from a certain distance – this is how the poetic-exuberant and at the same time exhausting-dramatic journey takes me.
And apparently it wasn’t my fault, as evidenced by the hundreds of enchanted and silent people around me who had gathered in a Berlin open-air cinema that was often full of exuberant atmosphere when I first saw it.