Coming Apart (1969)
7/10
One camera, all Rip Torn
22 August 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Alright, I take it back, some found footage is good.

Then again, not all found footage movies are this great.

New York psychiatrist Joe Glazer (Rip Torn) is going through a divorce and has taken on the name of Glassman and rented an apartment. There, he has a video camera behind a mirror that records his love life and his rambling speeches as he goes through an emotional collapse.

It also records his relationships with three women: his ex-mistress Monica (Vivica Lindfors, Creepshow), a former patient named Joann (Sally Kirkland) and Karen (Phoebe Dorin), the wife of one of his best friends.

Coming Apart was shot in a one-room, 15 × 17 foot apartment on a $60,000 budget. Director and writer Milton Moses Ginsberg filmed the entire movie with one static shot to look like a fake documentary. He would later tell Film Comment, "The film was about a psychiatrist encased in his own reflection, using a hidden camera to record his own disintegration. The film was also about the pleasures and price of promiscuity, and about the form and duration of cinema itself - or so I hoped. And to a degree that still embarrasses, it was about me. Appropriate, the title Coming Apart."

He followed this up with - incredibly - The Werewolf of Washington.

Rip Torn is on camera for this entire movie and he owns every single moment. While the single shot may limit some viewer's enjoyment, I found this riveting and a movie that I'd been yearning to watch.
1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed