Timecode (2000)

TIME CODE (not Timecode) was filmed in 4 continuous takes beginning at 3:00pm on Friday, November 19th, 1999. All of the cast improvised around a predetermined structure... WHAT'S THE POINT!?!

This film may being "artsy" or "experimental" but if the audiences viewing and enjoyment of the film is totally ruined as a result; then really: What Is The Point?

Going into the movie I didn't know what to expect and when I saw that the picture was split into quarters I thought "this is unusual" but was wondering WHEN the screen would turn into a single visual. It wasn't until about 15 minutes in that it occurred to me that - THE WHOLE FRAKKING FILM IS LIKE THIS! All 97 minutes. Even the flipping End Credits FFS!

Trying to follow a story from one of the 4 frames is very restrictive because although you can see 4 frames at once, you are only allowed (for obvious reasons) to hear one frames' dialogue clearly at a time.

And just as you are following THAT storyline, the filmmakers decide to fade down the volume and switch to a different frame. SO F***ING ANNOYING! What's most annoying is that this fail of a movie does have a brilliant cast, so it's a real shame that their efforts went to waste on this nonsensical idea for a feature film.

Fmovies: Too much. Too bad.

Screen split into four sections. Some seem connected. Some don't. Woooooooo.

It's got the "video" look. Glassy. Too bright. Too far away or too close. Shaky at times. Woooooooo.

The dialogue is hushed in three screens. Loud in one. Loud screen changes often. Draws your attention. Woooooooo.

All this can't cover up the fact that this film is essentially crap. Boring dialogue. Stilted acting. Pointless drivel. Boooooooo.

Too much. Way too bad to watch more than a few minutes.

"Timecode". What does this have to do with the content of Figgis's film? As we discover towards the end, without any chance of our being mistaken, nothing. It must be a reference to whatever device Figgis used to synchronise his actors. And that lets us know where his interests lay: in filming four simultaneous, 97-minute takes - certainly not in telling a decent story.

This lack of concern for anything except the technical challenge - we don't even get a sense of exhilaration at seeing Figgis pull it off - could not be more naked. On four occasions, there's an earth tremor. How do these little earthquakes help the film or the viewer? Not in the least - but it helps Figgis synchronise his actors. (Can you think of a LESS creative way of working a necessary synchronising device into the - cough - story? I can't.) Characters from different frames bump into one another now and then, and sometimes this serves an artistic purpose. Equally often, however, it doesn't. The characters aren't interacting; the actors are reminding one another which bit they're up to.

And here's the moment that really gives the game away. Towards the end, in the two bottom frames, we see a young director pitching her idea for a new kind of movie - and it turns out that she wants to make "Timecode"! Wow, self-reference! The last, and this case probably the first, refuge of the creatively bankrupt. I wanted to swear out loud. I'd been waiting over an hour for some payoff, some tiny sign of confluence between Figgis's four-frame device and the (cough) story he was trying to tell with it, and THIS is the best he could do? To add insult to injury, the movie our young director was pitching wasn't QUITE "Timecode". It was better. It had music by Hans Eisler, for one thing. (Apart from the melody sung during this pitch, the music in "Timecode" is banal, and it's used with a ham-fisted incompetence that has to be heard to be believed.) Also, our young director had a neat idea. She wanted to adapt a Borges story in which an old man and a young man meet, chat, and gradually discover that they're the very same person, at different stages of his life. "Each of the four main characters," continues our young director, "will be the same person, at a different stage of life." At this point our eyes scan the four frames to see if this is true of "Timecode", at least metaphorically. No, it isn't. Not even metaphorically. I felt like beating my head against the chair in front of me. Why was I watching Figgis's wretched movie? I wanted to watch HER movie!

As the young director points out, this kind of thing is the offspring of digital technology. Well, not quite. Alfred Hitchcock came up with the idea of a film without cuts in the 1940s, and more or less put it into practise with "Rope". It goes without saying that "Rope" is far superior. The irony is that it's also far truer to Figgis's avowed ideal of perfect continuity. In "Timecode" a vertical slash and a horizontal slash divide the screen into four. EVERY FRAME is cut into pieces - Hitchcock merely had a discreet, and to the best of his ability invisible, cut every ten minutes or so. (He also had a story, but I should stop harping on that.) Talk about a bad bargain. And it gets worse. The digital technology that makes Figgis's inferior vision possible also makes every frame look ugly. Add the fac

Timecode fmovies. Sometimes 'original' does not mean good. Or 'daring' equate with talent. This movie has a tired old plot and not believable as presented. Plus someone capsulized it as 'an amazing experience'. Well jumping out of an airplane without a parachute at 10,000 feet, would also be an 'amazing experience', but it would only happen once in your life time. Unfortunately this may not be the case for this style of film making. Again this is just my opinion.

A fantastic effort that narrowly missed out on being brilliant. I loved what this movie tried to do, although ultimately it became a little boring. I love real time movies, and I love long takes, in this case the whole movie. With a stronger plot and script for the actors to work with, this style could succeed. The one thing I noticed at the end of the movie was how draining it was trying to follow every conversation on each of the four screens.

I respect the challenge that this movie presented. Four cameras running in real time, with synchronized events? Wow. But without an engaging story the challenge is equivalent to building a replica of the Empire State Building out of matches. Impressive but pointless.

If you are a movie student it is worth seeing. Maybe you can turn this great idea into a real movie.