Grenfell (2023) ****

The single take has been the Holy Grail of directors ever since Alfred Hitchcock just about managed to use it for the entirety of Rope (1948). A quarter of a century on critics were raving about the complete one-take circle Michelangelo Antonioni achieved in The Passenger (1975) and half a century later for Sam Mendes’s  1917 (2019).  Every now and then an audacious director tries to earn kudos by employing the single take for long periods or editing a film in such a way as to get the same effect.

Oscar-winning British director Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave, 2013) has jumped to the top of that particular technical tree by shooting all of Grenfell in one single mostly silent aerial take. I happen to be a big fan of the single take, much as I thoroughly enjoy reading long sentences in books. And for the same reason: the result is often hypnotic.  

The movie opens in the sky a good distance from London to which the camera moves in stately progression. Below is traditional English countryside cut up by long avenues of trees. As we approach the city of London, all that divides the close-packed houses are other houses, although, it being England, there are still swathes of green.

We take a right as we fly over Wembley Station, the soccer fan’s Holy Grail, home of the F.A. Cup Final, international football matches and countless rock concerts including the legendary Live Aid (most recently replicated in Bohemian Rhapsody, 2018).  Gradually, in the distance appears something untoward. We are not close enough to the ground to see when buildings have lost their sheen, but high enough so that they still seem solid. But up ahead, coming slowly into view, is a jarring spectacle.

A charred skyscraper. Grenfell Tower. The remains of a devastating fire that in June 2017 killed 72 inhabitants. Some of the lower floors are white, which makes the upper floors stand out in sharper contrast. What work is going on is hard to determine – there’s a crane and men working on scaffolding. Maybe they are just adding more white panels to cover up the ruin, some kind of PR exercise to rid the city of the monstrosity and the memory of what happens when money talks and warnings are ignored.

The building is a rarity for such a devastating fire. After blazes with such a high death toll, there’s not much left of a structure, usually an empty shell, or as with the 9/11 Twin Towers nothing at all. This was a different kind of fire. Faulty easily-combustible plastic “cladding” – “siding” to use the American term as in the ubiquitous “aluminum siding” that Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito sold in Tin Men (1987) – caused the catastrophe, allowing flames to race up the sides, emanating toxic smoke, too quickly for those inside to escape.

The camera takes a few turns around the building and you can glimpse the dead interior and imagine the lives once lived.

It’s not a long film. Only 24 minutes, and a chunk of that taken up with just getting there. Now it stands as a monument to injustice. Though the building lies within a prosperous London borough, only the poor lived here, and possibly might have only done so until they could be kicked out and the building demolished by a more normal means so that upmarket apartments could be sold to richer people.

As the camera rotates round the building, coming at it from slightly different angles, and without music to infuse it with deceptive grandeur, the result is less hypnotic than disorientating and your mind has to work hard to snatch at the images being shown, taking a while to realize that there’s going to be no coup de theatre, no grandstand finish, no sigh of relief – none of the “oh, that’s what it’s all about” that accompanies some opaque arthouse picture.

It ends as it begins with a blank screen, no credits.

It’s something of a cult film. There’s only one print and it’s only showing in one cinema, and not the kind you find in a multiplex, just a space within the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park in London. Admission is free and there are several showings at day. It was self-funded by McQueen, who had links to the Grenfell community, went to art school nearby and ran a stall at a market not far away. But it’s not intended for commercial purpose. There might not even be a DVD or end up on a streaming channel as I guess part of the experience is to see it with a group of people and all come out shell-shocked to the foyer and stare at the list of the names of the victims.

It’s running in London till May 10 so maybe if you’re over for the Coronation of King Charles you might just happen upon it. I was in London on Sunday past visiting my son and he had arranged the tickets. He’s pretty good at this sort of thing, one other time I saw him he had got tickets to see that eternally-long film about clocks (whose name I forget) at the Tate.  I doubt if anyone’s going to fly thousands of miles just to see it, but my guess is it will eventually go on tour and be shown in one museum after another.

Unlike the Twin Towers, there’s no one group to blame, but like the worst of ordinary disasters it’s a combination of various corporations and community officials whose watchword is greed or disinterest rather than common humanity.