The tracking shot isn’t exactly a new thing. You’ve got Danny driving his way down that iconic carpet in The Shining, Oh Dae-su slaughtering his way through series of disposable men in Oldboy, and Will Schofield making his way through the hell of war in 1917, just to name a few notable examples.
In the case of The Place Beyond the Pines, however, a continuous tracking shot is used to introduce the audience to its central character. And guess what? He doesn’t talk for the whole sequence, so the audience have got to put in all that hard work to understand what’s going on. Come on now, this isn’t a Transformersmovie. You’ve got to focus.
The film begins with a black screen as the credits roll. We can hear a constant repetitive noise, but we don’t know what it is. When we see our first image, this sound can be located from a switchblade, with an unseen figure rolling it over dangerously in his hand before stabbing it against a wall. They grab a shirt from the side and proceed to walk outside into a carnival space. Loud music blares over the soundscape, but the figure in front of us says nothing, continuing to walk forward as he dons a jacket. Lots of flashing lights are on display as he moves through the carnival, but provides us with no speech to tell us where we are or what’s going on. Come on, you didn’t expect this to be easy, did you?
The camera carries on following, but still no speech. We see the guy take a smoke, but again, no speech. At least the camera receives a nice dose of fumes for its effort. Anyway, the figure then walks into an area of relative darkness as he gets shot by a camera before entering a tent with a crowd of cheering onlookers. Does the figure make a big announcement? Nope, he just carries on walking until he arrives an empty motorbike, and gets on said motorbike. The announcer is left to announce his name. Handsome Luke, apparently. I’m pretty sure that’s not what his folks christened him. But anyway. We do finally see his face when the camera swerves around. But then he covers it with a helmet (safety first, guys), and then we don’t. Great. Then he enters a metal ball of death with the other two bikers and start driving around at insane speeds. Who is this guy? We don’t know.
And that what makes this scene great. After more than three minutes of the camera staring at the central character, we don’t know anything more about him. We have to decipher this silent individual from imagery and sound alone. If this ain’t minimalist, I don’t know what is. Cool.