A shot might run forever, or as long as life. Sometimes you feel that urge in its momentum. It’s part of the fluidity in film and the modern sensibility of surveillance. That Zapruder film from Dealey Plaza concludes when the motorcade races away to the hospital, and Zapruder surrenders to the shock of what he had witnessed. But our curiosity about that terrible day wishes the shot could be endless. If it could have begun earlier, and known to pick out some special places (if Hitchcock or Scorsese had been in charge). If it had been thorough surveillance; if it had scrutinized every possible shooting spot—then the motorcade might have been stopped. You can anticipate the discipline that follows in a future security system that sees everything. A tracking shot—working in space or time—is an exploring wonder. But how will it terminate? Jean-Luc Godard once said that every beautiful tracking shot—even those by Max Ophüls—contained the seeds of its own destruction. It had to stop eventually, and in practice that required an imperative of story.
