Timecode Review
by "Harvey S. Karten" (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)April 25th, 2000
TIME CODE
Reviewed by Harvey Karten
Screen Gems
Director: Mike Figgis
Writer: Mike Figgis
Cast: Xander Berkeley, Golden Brooks, Saffron Burrows, Viveka Davis, Richard Edson, Aimee Graham, Salma Hayek, Glenne Headley, Andrew Heckler, Holly Hunter, Danny Huston, Patrick Kearney, Elizabeth Low, Daphna Kastner, Kyle MacLachlan, Mia Maestro, Leslie Mann, Laurie Metcalf, Suzi Nakamura, Alessandro Nivola, Zuleikha Robinson, Julian Sands, Stellan Skarsgard, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Steven Weber
Being able to walk and chew gum at the same time is all very nice, but multitasking is getting out of hand. People can't walk in the street any more without drinking their morning coffee while simultaneously talking on their cell phones, and carrying backpacks loaded with survival equipment (bottled water and the like) more suited to camping trips than subway rides to the office. People read magazines in restaurants while chomping on food they have not looked at, they cruise the web and they watch pictures within pictures on TV. The decade from 2000 to 2009 could be called the time of "The Unfocused Generation."
Mike Figgis now makes matters worse. Apparently believing that we in the movie audience cannot sit still to watch a story, he divides his screen into four quadrants, with each telling a part of the story during four 93-minute takes filmed digitally in real time without editing. He splashes the sections across the screen, each showing characters involved in actions in separate areas from the others, but all taking place in and around an L.A. movie studio building. The performers move from cell to cell, each improvising the lines, because Figgis gives the talent only a broad outline and lets everyone loose to ham up a paltry story. We might wonder whether the experimental photography, involving digital tech that is supposed to be the wave of the near future, is designed simply to distract the audience from a banal non- script, just as Emperor Commodus gave his Romans bread and circuses to divert them from his tyranny and his designs on a popular general.
The story takes place in the area of Sunset Boulevard. In opening scene which thankfully takes place in only one quadrant, Emma (Saffron Burrows) talks to a psychotherapist, moaning about her life while her husband Alex (Stellan Skarsgard), the director of a small movie company, enjoys sexual affairs. His current mistress is an actress, Rose (Salma Hayek), whose purse has been bugged by her liaison, Lauren (Jeanne Tripplehorn) as Lauren drops Rose off for an audition. Allegedly a satire of Hollywood production, directing and acting procedures done with darkly comic overtones, "Time Code" unfolds an unimposing story of auditions, attractions and conundrums.
We are invited democratically to look inside any quadrant that strikes our fancy, but generally action that is at all dramatic or comic occurs in only one. The unifying element is a series of earthquakes that sets all four cameras a- shaking when Figgis anticipates enough audience ennui. For better or worse, he mutes or shuts off the sound in three quadrants at any given time to allow us to hear the ad-libbed conversations in the fourth box.
Mike Figgis's greatest coup also involves a hand held camera, but there is no way to compare the quality of his stunning "Leaving Las Vegas" with the useless anarchy he perpetrates this time around. "Time Code" helps prove the theory that to tell effective truths, you must distill everyday reality. Given the minimalist camera technique, the lack of editing, the want of a script, not even the energetic performance of Salma Hayek can save this probing of novelty that appears to exist for its own sake. There might have been material for a decent tale in "Time Code," but this film looks as though it were sent to an execution to have it drawn and quartered.
Rated R. Running Time: 93 minutes. (C) 2000
Harvey Karten, [email protected]
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
