Long takes and women

One thing the camera can’t do adequately is represent someone’s interior life – it can just hint that such a life exists. In some cases, this is even more powerful, because cinema evokes psychology through images of what we see every day. Much has been made lately about how novels help teach us to empathize, but I think cinema does the same, even without the arsenal of words and shifting perspectives that allow books to highlight interiority. However, through its ability to purely represent exteriors, cinema also demonstrates how humans react to the world through our bodies, not just our minds, and how interiority isn’t so separate from exteriority after all. Long takes are one of the best ways to bring these themes out.