Timecode

Alright so I thought that I’d start this whole thing off with the most recent movie that I watched, which makes a lot of sense since it’s the freshest in my mind and I am able to give you the my fullest account of the film. So let’s get started. The film we are discussing today is Timecode, which was written and directed by Mike Figgis and released in 2000. Figgis appeared to have his hands full with this project, which is an incredibly interesting idea. The entire film is four continuous takes all shown in split-screen. These four shots follow around the central characters as the story develops and shows one of the truly compelling aspects of this film. Only given plots points all of the actors improvised the film in real time shot on November 19th, 1999 at 3:00. The cast for the film is not well known with the exceptions of Selma Hayek, Holly Hunter, and Stellan Skarsgård, though some of you may know Mia Maestro from Alias in addition to Leslie Mann from various films. I highly doubt that I am the only individual who finds this idea fascinating, but unfortunately it was not enough to save the entire film.
As I watched the credits at the beginning of the film I was struck by the few actors I recognized and thought that even if the story was thin I could count on wonderful performances from them; and I was sadly mistaken. Many of the lesser-known actors do very little and it is Jeanne Tripplehorn (Lauren Hathaway), known mainly for her role in Big Love, that astounds me and not in a good way. She is on screen for longer than any of the other actors and does nothing, her main role is to react rather than act, but instead she sits there periodically smoking cigarettes. And when the time comes for her to act she is over-the-top and doesn’t really seem to know what she is doing. There is a scene where she begins to beat her lover, played by Selma Hayek, and not a moment of it seems natural. She pulls away at certain parts yet gives no reason in her actions or expressions as to why she does so and then she resumes her beating. At the end of the film after she kills Stellan Skarsgård’s character she walks down the street laughing maniacally and I couldn’t help but laugh at her. What shocked me even more than Tripplehorn’s performance was the fact that she is not the worst, that honor goes to Academy Award nominee Selma Hayek who played Rose. Hayek is far too animated for a role that is not playful at all and she doesn’t seem to do anything with her character. Perhaps improv is not Hayek’s strong suit as the actress seems completely out of her element for the entire film and is not able to hide that from the audience. There are awkward moments when she flails about on camera for no logical reason, and she does nothing in the early part of the film to indicate that she is in a relationship with Tripplehorn and the audience might not even know that until the two kiss. Though Hayek undoubtedly gives the worst performance it is Skarsgård who has the film’s worst moment. When he is shot his reaction is to merely say “Oh” and then proceed to answer his cell phone to talk to his daughter before he dies. That is not to say that there was no acting in the film, Holly Hunter is able to hold her own and give an adequate showing. Mia Maestro gives a convincing performance while her character is far-fetched, and even Golden Brooks is fine despite her character’s stereotypical opinions.
While the acting is drastically underwhelming it is ultimately with Figgis that the film fails. I haven’t heard of a film more conceptually interesting in a long time but the story and basic flaws in the setup leave the audience incredibly confused. While there are four things going on in the screen in front of you it is going to be difficult to keep the audience in tune with whichever storyline they should be focusing on at the time and Figgis does very little to steer the audience in any kind of direction. There are certain points where he increases the sound in one particular frame but does so only for a short period of time, so as the audience is trying to figure out where the conversation is coming from sound from the other frames comes back in. This is even more of a problem in the beginning of the film as the audience cannot identify the actors simply by their voices. This makes a very bizarre story very difficult to follow and even if it were any simpler I wouldn’t have been compelled to pay more attention than I did. The story is boring and the lack-luster performances just make it worse. A love affair between a supposed lesbian and a movie producer in a troubled marriage really sets the stage for all of the drama in the film, but late into the film it becomes clear that the studio is hearing a pitch for the movie Timecode itself. There is another story going on that occurs almost entirely independent from everything else, surrounding the producer’s wife and it is never really clear what is happening there. Poor sound quality also makes the film suffer, as it is incredibly difficult to distinguish who is talking or understand what they are saying.
All in all Timecode suffers from unfortunate execution, conceptually it is a compelling idea but it didn’t work here. While watching the movie I heard one person describe it as “the most expensive student film ever made” and I think that is a fitting title. I would like to see someone try to do something like this in the future and perhaps the world of film making could be richer for it.