Time & Perspective Quote by Atom Egoyan

Egoyan is drawing a line between two ways of looking that feel deceptively similar on screen but carry wildly different meanings. A zoom is a kind of optical cheat: the camera stays put while the image lunges forward, flattening space and declaring its intention. It can feel like surveillance, like attention without proximity, desire without risk. Physical camera movement, by contrast, is embodied. A dolly or tracking shot has weight, friction, consequences: it implies a crew in the room, a path cleared, a relationship negotiated between lens and subject.

The subtext is less about nostalgia for film stock than about ethics and psychology. Film production historically demanded deliberation - limited rolls, louder machinery, bigger setups - so the decision to move the camera was a decision to enter the scene. Video culture, especially in its lighter, cheaper forms, normalizes distance: stand back, zoom in, harvest detail. That’s not inherently worse, Egoyan suggests, but it changes the emotional contract. One mode approaches; the other targets.

Contextually, this fits Egoyan’s career-long preoccupation with mediation: how recordings, screens, and technologies warp intimacy and memory. He’s also implicitly critiquing a visual grammar that treats space as something you can compress at will. Physical movement preserves the stubborn fact of distance - and makes closing it feel earned. Zooms can create urgency; tracking shots create implication. Egoyan is defending implication, the kind that makes viewers feel not just informed, but implicated.