In Season 2 of Master of None, creators Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang boldly draw on Italian film classics, and apply their cinematic sensibility to the problems of the present. The end result is a fantastically creative and artistic spin on the modern romantic comedy.
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Transcript provided by Youtube:
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As Master of None’s meditations on dating in the smartphone age continue into the sophomore
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season, the show gets even bolder. Creators Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang draw on Italian
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film classics of the past, and apply their cinematic sensibility to the problems of the
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present.
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Master of None aligns itself as part of a grand cinematic tradition.
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As we look at these ultra-wide shots, we have no doubts that the show aspires to be, and
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is, art. And its bold, artistic self-assertion makes the show a game-changer for what future
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TV might look like.
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In Season 2, we open on Dev working as an apprentice working at a pasta shop in Italy.
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The pan in the first episode to Dev’s bedside stack of Blu Rays announces to us which movies
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Dev (and Ansari and Yang) have been watching in preparation for the season: Vittorio De
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Sica’s Bicycle Thieves; Michaelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte and L’Avventura, and Federico Fellini’s
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La Dolce Vita, 8½, and Amarcord.
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Master of None is rising to their level of cinematic poetry, their searching existential
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inquiries, the seriousness with which they treat personal dilemmas, and their inherently
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cool mood.
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The show pioneers a new form of what we might call “Arthouse TV”, or
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the “Arthouse Rom Com.”
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After World War II, neorealist directors like Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, and
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Luchino Visconti used a realistic, down-to-earth style to represent the day-to-day lives of
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poor people in a country that had been broken by the war.
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Season 2’s first episode, entirely in black-and-white and largely in Italian, is called “The Thief”
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— a direct homage to De Sica’s 1948 “Bicycle Thieves.”
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A defining example of Italian neorealism. Bicycle Thieves tells the tragic story of
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poor father Antonio and his young son Bruno as they search for Antonio’s stolen bicycle,
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which he desperately needs in order to work to support his family.
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In Master of None, it’s not Dev’s bike that has been stolen, but his phone — containing
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the phone number of a beautiful woman he’s just met.
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To the outside, Dev’s loss appears trivial — a “first-world problem” that couldn’t
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be farther from Antonio’s need to feed his family.
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The homage to sorrow-filled neorealism comically highlights the absurdity of the phone’s
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necessity.
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Dev picks up a young kid, Mario, to stand in for Bruno. And briefly, like Antonio, Dev
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himself becomes the thief of the item stolen from him.
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Yet, to Dev, the tragedy is earnest — what he’s lost is an opportunity for romance
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that he can’t know for sure wasn’t the real thing. While someone like Dev knows he’s
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privileged not to have the problems of Antonio, what he wants most — to meet someone to
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share his life with — continues to elude him.
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Vincent F. Rocchio has termed the Neorealist movement “Cinema of Anxiety”.
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Bicycle Thieves structures anxiety of social realities into the plot, to draw us into feeling
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Antonio’s desperation.
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In a very different way, Master of None’s TV of Anxiety pulls us into relating to Dev’s
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anxiety as he struggles with loneliness, the fear of never finding someone, and the difficulty
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of living an authentic life.
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Neorealism abandoned the past whitewashed, sentimental films for a grittier, realistic
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representation.
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Master of None also makes realism a priority — it gets serious when necessary; it holds
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longer than we expect on a small moment or feeling; and more than chasing a particular
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laugh or plot outcome, it’s trying to capture truth.
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The long shot of Dev alone in the back of the cab at the end of “The Dinner Party,”
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interrupted only by a short cut to his phone, captures the real feeling of a lonely ride
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home.
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While most TV shows would cut out of this moment, here we share in the interminable
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torture of not being able to cut away from our own dissatisfaction or loneliness in the
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same situation.
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Master of None’s realism also comes from the texture of mixing up, parodying and reinterpreting
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genre forms.
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This TV of realism has fun lambasting so-called “reality TV”.
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Neorealism was marked by its street-level view of the everyday lives of the poor, filmed
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on-location with largely unknown actors.
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Master of None’s “New York, I Love You” pays respect to this tradition by abandoning
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the series’ main cast in favor of a day-in-the-life of three blue-collar workers’ to represent
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a wider range of experience.
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The pause in the main story reminds us that Dev’s romantic struggles are a small drop
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in the bucket of trials facing millions of New Yorkers. And in a fun twist, seeing Dev
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taking in the movie Death Castle alongside these strangers — the cute comic button tells
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us we are all connected.
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The two Italian directors that Master of None draws on the most are Federico Fellini and
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Michelangelo Antonioni.
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Coming in near the end of neorealism, Fellini and Antonioni ushered in more decadent films
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about bourgeois characters, while rejecting more traditional plot structures in favor
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of mood-driven, cool alienation, searching existential inquiry and cinematic poetry.
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In Amarsi Un Po,’ Dev’s and Francesca’s dance moves echo the dancing in 8 1/2, and
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the opening shots of New York echo the famous helicopter shots at the start of La Dolce
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Vita.
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The 1983 song playing at the start of “Le Nozze” is also called “Dolce Vita.”
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And like “Amarcord” — which is dialect for “I remember,” loosely inspired by
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Fellini’s own childhood — Master of None continues its preference for comic vignettes
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and the cinematic feeling of a youth entering a crazy world and observing its colorful cast
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of characters.
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The deepest homages, though, are to Antonioni, and his L’Avventura, La Notte, and L’Eclisse
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— a spiritual trilogy, united by similar themes and all starring Monica Vitti.
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The second episode, Le Nozze, sounds like La Notte. “Le Nozze” actually means wedding
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or marriage, while La Notte means “night.”
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La Notte depicts a lavish party, during which Marcello Mastroianni’s character grapples
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with the realization that his wife no longer loves him.
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In Master of None, Arnold struggles to accept that his ex-girlfriend is getting married,
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and to someone who looks just like him, just smaller.
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Working within the same theme, Dev decides to stop texting with his ex, Rachel, so he
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can commit to moving on. The homage is sealed when it starts raining and the guests jump
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in the pool – a scene that recreates La Notte.
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“Amarsi Un Po’” translates to loving each other a little — it’s the name of
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a 1977 Italian song that plays at the end of the episode, and a 1984 rom com.
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The song’s words “Loving each other a little is like drinking” capture how Dev
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and Francesca are dipping their toes in the water of love, wondering whether loving each
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other, long-term, would really be as easy or as fun as this.
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The episode borrows directly from L’Eclisse, when Dev and Francesca kiss through glass
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just before actually kissing.
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And, of course, the biggest inspiration — especially in this episode — is L’Avventura, the story
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of the search for missing Anna by her best friend Claudia and her boyfriend Sandro, who
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soon forget all about Anna and begin a love affair.
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Like the missing Anna, Francesca’s fiance Pino is noticeably absent. The parallels are
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made very explicit when Dev and Francesca watch L’Avventura and Dev imagines that they
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are Sandro and Claudia.
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The vibrant Francesca herself feels like an actress out of one of these iconic movies
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— and the show intentionally draws that comparison, almost as if Dev has imagined this woman for
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himself out of watching enough Italian movies.
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Dev himself channels a Marcello Mastroianni-style of hero. He’s not an everyman. He’s charming,
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well-off, he’s lucky, he has a good income and lots of free time — which gives him space
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to contemplate his dissatisfaction and alienation.
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When Dev is trying to get over Francesca, he chooses between watching a terrible comedy
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to forget her, or L’Avventura.
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And he chooses the good movie.
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His choice of L’Avventura here is a meta-commentary reflecting the show’s ambitions.
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It doesn’t want to be a dumb enjoyable comedy that numbs our pain. It wants to be the beautiful,
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romantic story that moves us, even though it hurts.
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And its philosophy of life is, likewise, that we should take our own lives seriously, commit
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to the life we really want and who we want to be, even though it’s difficult.
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L’Avventura, La Notte, and L’Eclisse are often thought of as films in which nothing really
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happens.
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Antonioni radically rejected the tyranny of plot-driven storytelling. And many people
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objected to this, or still find his films boring today.
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Yet Master of None’s slow-paced growth — especially in Amarsi Un Po, as Dev and Francesca develop
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feelings for one another — meanders along in L’Avventura’s ambivalent footsteps.
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It captures L’Avventura’s emotional confusion and lack of a clear path forward.
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Dev questions whether his sadness is even truly about Francesca in particular.
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Like Sandro and Claudia, they are reaching out to quell their loneliness, but they don’t
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know with certainty what it is they’re really looking for.
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L’Avventura ends without closure, and Master of None’s second season also ends in ambiguity.
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We see a moment of Francesca in bed with Dev. We question whether it could be a flashback
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to the night of the snowstorm, since it’s snowing outside the window.
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But she’s wearing a different shirt.
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Meanwhile, the editing of the preceding scenes create the feeling that this moment could
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be in one, or both, of their heads. So the reality isn’t confirmed for us, for sure.
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Shortly before this, Dev bumps into Rachel and has a hurried conversation with her that
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he can’t wait to get out of.
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She’s a stranger who means nothing to him now that
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he’s in love with Francesca. It’s a significant meeting for its insignificance.
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And again it captures something real that many people experience — running into an
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ex who now feels like a stranger.
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And we can interpret the meaning of this scene in opposite ways.
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It could reinforce how real and deep his feelings for Francesca really are, since his connection
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with Rachel pales so much in comparison; or it could signal that, one day, running into
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Francesca like this could be just as uneventful.
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Our lives can’t escape this ambiguity of never quite knowing if the reality we feel
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in this moment will disappear; if the person we love will become a stranger.
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Life is that transience and that never knowing.
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As a romantic comedy set in New York, Master of None invites inevitable comparisons to
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Woody Allen.
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It calls to mind Allen’s upper-middle class perspective, romantic consternation, and neurotic
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talking and walking.
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Alessandra Mastronardi as Francesca also featured in Allen’s 2012 To Rome With Love. Like Allen’s
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Manhattan (1970) which uses few cuts, sometimes leaving the camera in place almost like we’re
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watching a play, DP Mark Schwartzbard has said that Yang and Ansari wanted a cinematic
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look with shots that would develop. Master of None isn’t quick to cut, but it favors
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wider shots and long takes.
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In film theory terms, this would be a mise-en-scene style, as opposed to montage.
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According to the cinematographer, the aesthetic was “all about old lenses and filtering
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to create a soft, glowy and romantic vision of New York,” and he’s cited the influence
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of 70s movies like Hal Ashby’s Shampoo and Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye.
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The show’s restrained choice to play out most of its actions on long takes of wides
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or medium-wides makes it all the more compelling when we do get close-ups, as in the key scene
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when Dev finally tells Francesca his feelings.
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Dev’s frustration has been mirrored in the camera that won’t let us get too close,
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until the emotional reveal finally allows us that proximity.
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The unhurried “walking and talking” courtship
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also reminds us of Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy. And the love triangles and spontaneous
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dance parties — plus Francesca’s ineffable whimsy and looks — call to mind French New
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Wave cinema.
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It’s not a big stretch to imagine her subbing in for Anna Karina in a Jean-Luc Godard film.
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In 1997 Roger Ebert asked:
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“Why don’t we have movies like “L’Avventura” anymore? Because we don’t ask the same kinds
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of questions anymore. We have replaced the “purpose of life” with the “choice of lifestyle.”
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Perhaps Master of None, too, is asking us to once again consider not just what we want,
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but why we want it.
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Our relief when Francesca finally admits to sharing Dev’s feelings is palpable, yet
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our anxiety persists because there is no way to know if taking the leap is really right
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for her or him.
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Despite what more conventional TV or movies might have us believe
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[I love Josh]
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more often than not we find ourselves in situations where we know we feel something, but it isn’t
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as simple as knowing ” I love you forever.”
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The best we can hope for might be to spend time with someone who lends our life a sense
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of purpose. At least for now.
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This post was previously published on Youtube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video