Wavelength

Wavelength, an experimental film created in 1967, defies all traditional forms of narrative and filmmaking. Its creation is credited to Michael Snow, a celebrated Canadian artist, and it features appearances from Hollis Frampton, Lyne Grossman, and Naoto Nakazawa. Unlike typical cinema, where a range of scenes and multiple perspectives are used to build a cohesive narrative, Wavelength takes an utterly different approach. It is a 45-minute continuous long shot set in a single loft space in New York.

The film's uniqueness and innovation lay in its potent blend of audacity and simplicity. Pure and straightforward, the movie is grounded on one gradual yet essentially unending zoom that takes the viewers across the breadth of the loft from one side to the other. It's like a journey, slow and calculated, every second expanding the viewer's understanding of the film's space. As time elapses, the camera gradually inches in towards one specific point: a photograph on the wall.

It could not be emphasized enough that Wavelength broke new ground for experimental film in the 60s. There are no plot twist, no surprise at the end, no buried secret or dramatic climax. This uninterrupted, narrowing visual path established an entirely new experience for audiences who were used to cut shots, changes in perspective, and shifting points of view. Instead, Wavelength offers a rich exploration of minimalist filmmaking amplifying the impact of static, unemotional, and unchanging cinematography.

What further stands out about Wavelength is its extreme play with pacing and duration. Its 45 minutes duration is purposefully stretched out to create an extraordinarily immersive experience. The journey across the loft feels like an unfolding story where the sense of passing time is thrown into sharp relief. Much of what occurs may seem mundane—a woman walks in, people come and go, there's a bit of everyday conversation, sometimes it's an empty room—but it's during these everyday actions and non-actions that the audience becomes acutely aware of time's insistent, relentless progress.

Graphically, the film begins with naturalistic color imagery then gradually introduces superimposed monochromatic color fields, including aperture flashes reaching full screen. Here, the film is more than just a visual: sound is also vital to this experience. There are no dialogues per se; instead, a droning sine wave accompanies the slow zoom, increasing in pitch as the camera draws closer to the end point—adding to a feeling of realization, almost like a revelation being revealed about the space.

Even the space the film sets in, a loft, is worth mentioning. An ordinary loft is transformed through its mundane depiction into an object of deep contemplation for the viewers. It's as though they're allowed to interpret the space in any way they like as the camera steadily moves along. This simplistic presentation, ironically, gives room for deep interpretation.

As much as Wavelength challenges the conventional cinematic narrative with its long, unbroken shot, it's crucial to point out that the film still, in many ways, retains some elements of classical storytelling. For instance, Wavelength introduces a sort of beginning, middle, and end structure, however subtle. The film starts us off in an empty, silent loft then introduces mundane activities and ends in a detailed closeup of the wall's specific photograph. Albeit weakly sketched out, the narrative exists, subtly masked in the seamlessness of the minimalistic design.

To sum it up, Wavelength is not a film for those looking for a straightforward story or soap opera dramatics. Instead, it's an epic of minimalist narrative cinema, a film that takes you on a slow but steady journey across a loft. It's an exploration of time, spaces, and the essence of film as a medium. It challenges traditional film elements, making its viewers question and contemplate the movie's seemingly simple narrative. Experimental, even for many filmmakers today, Wavelength was a breakthrough masterpiece that resonated substantially through the decades, shaping our understanding and appreciation of experimental cinema.