The Passenger

from a review by Jake Meany of Stylus Magazine . . .

"And then there's the simply stunning release, the consummation of both Locke's journey and that of the restless camera. As Locke flops down on a hotel bed to meet his end, the camera pans away and comes to rest gazing out through the barred hotel window. An apt metaphor, this prison that always awaits us at the end, no matter how much we try to escape it. Except, in a remarkable single tracking shot that must go on for a good eight or nine minutes, the camera begins a long slow glide towards the window, pushes through the bars and then makes a circuit of the barren town square just outside the hotel, as the girl wanders about confusedly, a young child throws stones at an old man, and cars arrive bearing the guerrillas, and then the wife and the police—and then it slowly curves back towards the hotel, back through the window, to find Locke dead on the bed. It's brauva filmmaking, as confident and exciting as the famous opening of Touch of Evil, and is probably the only way The Passenger could've satisfactorily answered its central conundrum in a way that wasn't totally despairing. In this shot, in this final release, this ultimate disappearance, this pushing out through the bars, Locke finally yields to the void he'd been trying to escape throughout the film, and only then does he find his salvation, closing the circle and vanishing into it—freedom, at last."

this is a must see film