Festival press has been quick to condemn Ruben Andreyev’s ambitious 3-hour single-take film of a potato, Potato, for being slow, melodramatic, and starchy beyond limits even contemplated by the director of The Turin Horse. But critics’ main beef has been with the medium. ‘Why in this digital age, when you can obtain better results from ah az you say, the edit,’ said a good friend of The Gorko, TANIA, neatly summing up the dismay of other festivalgoers, ‘do ah insist on three-five millimeter?!?’
Yet the film does portray, in gritty existential realism and stark but heartbreaking beauty, potato.
Available for streaming on Dusty Hulu, Cannes O’Mit, and Amazoning.
Photo by muhammed [paqer on Unsplash