Timecode is either a brilliant success or a dazzling failure, depending on your tolerance level for experimental cinema.

Director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) goes where no filmmaker has gone before: giving us four stories told simultaneously in one unbroken take. From the first moment, the screen is split into quarters, each camera following a set of characters who sometimes connect, intersect and collide with each other.

Alfred Hitchcock came close to this 53 years ago with Rope, presented to us in one continuous take (though, in reality, Hitch had to stop the camera from time to time in order to change the film). Figgis, however, goes Rope three better. The result is impressive from a technical standpoint, but can turn into an eye-crossing exercise when you’re sitting in the audience.

Figgis (who shouldered one of the cameras himself) used high-definition digital cameras to follow the action in one continuous stream for 93 minutes (the exact length of a digital videocassette). The hand-held cameras move fluidly through the thick of the action (though I’ll be darned if I ever caught sight of a camera operator in one of the other shots). Using a technique Figgis called “crash, zoom and focus,” the cameras deliver the goods documentary-style—though it’s never as aggravating as the Jigglecam of The Blair Witch Project.

Rather than a script, the actors were given maps and charts and everyone wore synchronized watches so cues could be timed as closely as possible (though I’ll be darned if I caught any one of them sneaking a glance at their wrist during the 93 minutes). Each actor wore a microphone and the sound was recorded on multiple tracks. The crew rehearsed the long takes for several days, improvising most of the dialogue and Figgis meshed the best results together.

What we get is something like a caffeinated Robert Altman home video. The quadrupled dialogue overlaps, characters in the upper left frame suddenly appear in the lower right, you get to see both ends of a cell phone conversation at once, and so on. The eye flits between each of the four views, never quite sure what to watch. Figgis tries to direct our attention to a particular quadrant through sound cues—raising the volume here, muting the sound there—but I often found my eye wandering over to one of the other three screens, depending on what was happening there.

Timecode can be distracting and self-conscious; at times, it’s like one of those 3-D movies from the 50s which screamed, “Look at what I can do!” You know, technique for technique’s sake.

Timecode is also breathtakingly bold—damn the audience, full speed ahead. For that bravado, I admire Figgis and his ability to juggle what must surely have been a logistical nightmare. I also appreciate the statement he makes here about what he calls “the corruption of editing” and how cutting real life into pieces then splicing it back together in subjective order presents a false, skewed vision of our existence. Each time we go to the movies, we’re being lied to, thanks to the editor’s blade. Timecode gives it to us straight with no flicker, fade or segue.

By now you’re probably wondering what kind of meat goes along with this gravy (you’re probably also wondering whether Figgis has a history of recent drug use). Rest assured, there is a story (or two or four) buried in all the flashy technique. It’s not a very exciting story and it’s not a story your average film school student couldn’t turn out in an afternoon…but it’s a story nonetheless. Just be thankful Figgis didn’t just train four cameras on four different navels and make us contemplate those for 93 minutes.

A film company, headed by Stellan Skarsgard, is trying to cast its newest production, what appears to be a Grade-B erotic thriller. So we get scenes of production chiefs—Holly Hunter, Steven Weber, Xander Berkeley and others—sitting around discussing recent projects like Yo, Grandpa! and getting pitches for future films like Time Toilet, a comedy written by “those South Park guys.” In the back room, we see the high-strung director (Richard Edson) auditioning young ingénues whose main job is to simulate sexual ecstasy on cue.

On another screen, we listen in as Saffron Burrows talks to a psychologist about her crumbling marriage. Turns out her husband is Skarsgard (who, it also turns out, is an alcoholic—he spends most of the film stumbling and slurring). She’s obviously depressed and wanders the L.A. sidewalks like she’s being forced to walk barefoot over broken glass. When she finally meets up with Skarsgard at the film company offices, she announces she’s leaving him.

Meanwhile, up in the other quadrant (the northwest sector, in case you were wondering), Salma Hayek and Jeanne Tripplehorn are two lovers riding in a limousine. Hayek, an aspiring actress, is on her way to an audition (gee, can you guess which film company she’s going to?). She’s also on her way to a secret rendezvous with her male lover. By coincidence and contrivance, this turns out to be Skarsgard. Tripplehorn suspects she’s being played for a fool and when Hayek’s back is turned, she puts a bug in her purse then spends most of the film eavesdropping on the tryst through headphones.

There’s a bunch of other stuff that happens—four earthquakes, two characters have sex in a screening room, lines of cocaine are inhaled and someone brandishes a gun—but mostly it’s a simple tale of love, betrayal and the pursuit of hedonism. You know, your typical afternoon in Hollywood.

You’ll notice I referred to the actors without using their characters’ names. That’s because none of the characters stuck in my mind except as types: the distraught wife, the two-faced lover, the messed-up studio chief. And that’s one of Timecode’s failings—the self-conscious technique holds us at a distance from the characters. Our eyes are so busy roving over the squares on the screen, it’s nearly impossible to get deeply involved with any one plot strand (unless, of course, we watch Timecode four separate times).

Most of the acting is as good as we can expect from something written with maps and not a script. Fans of improvisation-style filmmakers like Robert Altman or Mike Leigh will feel right at home; other viewers who like their movie words neatly manufactured will be bored and restless. I especially liked the performances from Burrows, Hunter, Weber and Julian Sands who shows comic flair as a masseuse. Sustaining a high level of energy for an entire 93-minute take is impressive, especially when you consider that these actors are used to two-minute chunks of time in front of the camera before they slip off to their air-conditioned dressing room trailers stocked with bottles of Evian and Mrs. Fields cookies. But, really, it’s hard to judge the acting in Timecode when your eyes are so busy skimming from corner to corner.

Which is a shame because, for all its seen-it-before plot, there’s actually some smart satire at work in the improvised script. Hollywood always has loads of fun when it’s skewering itself (one of my favorite indies of recent years was Tom DiCillo’s Living In Oblivion which screwballed independent filmmaking itself). One of the best lines I caught in Timecode was when someone asked studio exec Steven Weber why they called it a budget. His deadpan answer: “They call it a budget so you don’t budge from it.” I also found it funny how most of the studio suits moved in a herd formation.

Figgis finds time to slip in some soapboxing about the very type of filmmaking he’s presenting here. Late in the film, an avant garde director comes to the studio to pitch her new idea—yep, you guessed it: simultaneously shot stories. “Digital video has arrived and is demanding new expressions, new sensations—it’s time to move forward, to move beyond,” she says, then goes on to ramble about the isolation of the take and the discontinuity of the editing process. From where he’s slumped over in his chair, Skarsgard gives her a bleary-eyed stare and says, “That’s the most pretentious crap I’ve ever heard.”

Depending on your ability to split your attention in four different directions, those might be the very words on your lips after you’ve sat through Timecode.



Recommended:
Yes