The French Chronicle takes Wes Anderson’s own aesthetic further. Also, an interesting look at the cinematographic world and its possibilities. The way Anderson managed to narrate several stories together that pay tribute to the journalistic world with intelligent and moving precision. But in addition, the film has something else to boast about: one of the most amazing scenes of the year 2021.
For its final segment, Anderson’s film shows an uninterrupted sequence of almost 70 seconds that dazzled audiences and critics. It is a sequence shot that shows various situations, that crosses spaces and contextualizes history. According to the director in statements to Vulture, the visual prowess is due to a combination of factors. But especially at the hand of the expert cameraman Sanjay Sami. Anderson’s frequent collaborator, whose work was already enjoyed in Grand hotel Budapest, got the seemingly impossible shot without digital effects. In fact, it is an interesting tour.
Sami himself described takes it as the “most complicated” in which he has worked in his long career of more than two decades. This is not an assertion lightly. In the sequence, the weightless camera shows hallways, a police station, and even a small detour from the original path of the character Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright). This is a clever game of perspective that describes the volatile quality of the news story. Also, it includes the film’s flexible view of the history of a fictional Kansas week.
Technique, mechanics and a good eye
Anderson and Sami they discussed for weeks how to carry out the shot. The expert – who began his career in Bollywood – had to use all his ingenuity. The director wanted more than a sequence shot by an intrusive and observant camera with no obvious cuts. Too I wanted high speed zigzag movements and at 90 degree angles at four different points on the stage.
Anderson’s requests were accurate. I wanted the camera to move sideways, so that it gave the impression of going through the walls following the narration. Then he would turn at an angle to focus on Wright’s character again. How to achieve such a thing without rails or a Steadicam? For Sami it was a considerable challenge. Anderson also wanted the movement to feel fluid, without obvious jolts or digital traps.
“The precision that Wes demands is so great that you have to put the camera on the tracks to get the effect you want”, commented the expert for Vulture. “The stability, the stiffness of a dolly is what makes it a Wes Anderson take.”
It is not a whim or much less an Anderson obsession. For both the director and the expert cameraman it was a punctual element of photographic language. “When you stop the camera or slow it down and speed it up again, or whatever, it’s all scoring,” says Sami. So he understood the director’s motives for creating the impossible shot to achieve it, even without knowing very well if he could do it.
The prodigy of the year in 70 seconds
The solution was build a suitable scenario from scratch to fulfill what Anderson wrote in the script. Roebuck’s journey through several different settings without the character or the camera pausing.
In four weeks, Sami and the technical team built a set that included the police station and all the spaces that the character would pass through. In addition, they included dollies that would support one another. And at the end, spaces between walls to allow the passage of the camera. According to the diagram built by Sami, the three 90-degree changes indicated by the script narration would be achieved. The camera lens would be inside the slot as the platforms moved under the stage.
The result, which took almost four more weeks to shoot, was a stunning shot that wowed audiences and critics alike. And perhaps the most powerful point in a story interested in what is being told. For Sami and Anderson it was a way of propping up his vision on the writing of the news. For the cinema, it is history.