A new movie genre?

“There’s been a couple of recent movies set over a short period of time, like a day or even a week, which attempt to capture the essence of a person or an event.”

“48 Hours?”

“I wasn’t thinking of THAT one specifically, although it IS an example of the genre.”

“IS it a genre? A time genre? And if so, what do you call it? How does it fit in with horror, romance, action, or suspense?”

“Potted Lives? Encapsulated Events?”

“Ugh. Can you imagine THOSE in the catalogue of Netflix?”

“’The Queen’ was about a week.You got a glimpse of her half-century reign in how she, helped by Tony Blair, coped with Diana’s death and the British people’s reaction to it. Through Helen Mirren’s uncanny projection of Elizabeth’s character, you get a sense of the whole fifty years that preceded THAT WEEK.”

“I saw ‘Bobby’ the other day. Robert Kennedy’s last day through the lives of people working in the hotel he was shot during that day. Maybe that is another example.”

“Reviewers gave it a hard time.”

“Yes. But there was some clever dialogue like the scene in the kitchen where Mexicans are jousting with Laurence Fishburn on racial issues.”

“So this new approach to telling a story – you could say it’s like an epic theme filmed through a microscope, not through a wide angle to capture the cast of thousands.”

“Cheaper to produce too.”