Why the Long Take?

I’m an unabashed supporter of the long take in cinema (i.e. excruciatingly unending shots), and I recently wrote about it for the new website Into the Hill:

The long take is, in my opinion, the most cinematic of all cinematic devices. It gets to the heart of what cinema is: a series of moving images that captures time as it happens. It has recently been used in gimmicky and show-offy ways (Children of Men, Atonement, etc), albeit to spectacular effect. But the long take is far more than just a tactic for the skillful filmmaker to use and exploit to wow his or her audience. No, the long take is the heart of cinema. Or, at least, it is the heart of cinema’s potential for the transcendent.

Read the rest of the essay here.