by Burlin Barr
published in Camera Obscura 18, 2003.

Too Early, Too Late[Trop tot, trop tard] (dir. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Germany, 1981) begins with a traveling shot best described as vertiginous. The shot—more than seven minutes in duration—is filmed from an automobile driving around the traffic circle at the Place de la Bastille in Paris. The camera looks outward; the spectator never sees the center around which the activity turns. The shot provides no clearly explicated ideological or narrative context. What it offers, rather, is a constantly transformed articulation of space and a profusion of events, none of which appear to bear more importance than any other. Spectators may take note of the changing architectural setting or will see and hear traffic simultaneously converging and diverging as vehicles enter the frame at different speeds and from different angles. Yet as the shot proceeds, a compelling construct emerges. Not only are speed and direction difficult to discern, not only is spatial orientation a momentary event, but spatial hierarchies are entirely undone and transformed. Here is neither left nor right; north is not above the south. Here the space of the framer will soon be framed. The mobility of the shot undermines even the certainty of a “here” and “there.” In every sense, collisions seem imminent.