Movie focus

I was absorbed in my reading on the bus. I felt it turn, and turn, and when I looked away from the kindle I realized I'd lost track of where we were. It wasn't significant--my exit wasn't for another 15 minutes--but it was a sharp reminder that I'm not always attentive. The sketch of a man eyeing an attractive woman walking by and running into a phone pole he didn't notice is funny because it's all too true.

What comes to mind is one of those scenes in the New Zealand movies where there's vast scenery and a troop of nine walking along the ridge. My eyes flick back and forth between the scenery and the actors, and when I concentrate on one the other fades.

Suppose you were making a "first person"/stream-of-consciousness movie, seeing what the protagonist sees and hearing what he hears. You could force the viewpoint with camera focus, and maybe with post-processing tricks to literally fade other things in view. I've seen something like this done when the hero has been drugged or slugged and is slowly gaining consciousness, but that's only for a scene. I wonder if you can do it longer. Finding a balance between single-minded focus and flicking the attention this way and that would be quite a trick.

In clumsy hands this would be unwatchable. Without a good story-line reason for doing it, it would be pretentious. With skill and story-telling reason--it might still be a poor choice.

Somebody is bound to have tried this--probably many somebodies. And I'd bet most of the results aren't any good: in art "90% of everything is junk". Has this approach to forcing the viewer's attention ever worked?