Adolescence (2025)
I see where the hype comes from, I just don’t fully agree with it. While the one-shot approach is highly impressive, I found it to be pretty distracting. At least at first, where you become too much aware that there is a camera moving around. It doesn’t feel natural. However, by the second episode I did stopped noticing it. I do like good use of long takes, but I prefer static shots and not this overuse of steadycam in dialogue scenes. The approach also adds a whole lot of time spent moving around behind people walking through doors, which isn’t very interesting and for me ruined the pace. It also reminded me why I in recent years have taken less interests in series, as they often tend to stretch their narratives too long. The first two episodes here are really not conveying a whole lot of information, and the padded length by having everything in real time didn’t add a whole lot in my opinion.
With the very big exception of the third episode. That was masterfully done and really benefited from the real time approach. A single location and one conversation where a whole lot is conveyed through subtle means and big outbursts of emotion and information. I know that it needs some context to work so well, but it didn’t need a full two hours of prelude. 90% of my praise for this miniseries is for that episode alone. There is a 5 star movie in there somewhere.
This needs high praise for how it deals with the controversial themes without judging its characters. We don’t need everything resolved or explained, but we get enough context to understand that it is meaningless to put simplistic blame on a single person. No easy answers.
Rating: 3.5