THE HURRY OF MOVEMENT

Using an example of a film and the texts by Doane and Flusser; this is a reflection on cinematic time as a subversion of linear or continuous time

Time is like a titan, an enormous monster that cannot be stopped. Life has assumed time as something inherent, without which, life would lack of meaning. Time passes and waits for no one. Time makes movement and permits us to live and to do things. Even though time is objective, every second passes equally for everyone, human beings experiment time in different ways: when we are in pain, time passes slowly, when we are having fun, time passes fast and as soon as we realise it, the fun is over. But this is all a perception of time because time goes by always in the same way. When cinema emits an image, each shot contains a message that we as an audience have to get first and decompose later. This is the same as reading still images: we pass our eyes over its surface, as Flusser defends in Line and Surface, “in paths that are vaguely suggested by the pictures”, but we’re free to chose how to read it, not like a book, which we read it in a linear way. For him, cinema is born from the union of writing lines and pictures with time added, time is then, what creates the moving images. Reading this kind of moving messages imply time present, time past and time future. But is this time always the same?

Cinema is the only method of expression that can sub-verse the linear or continuous eminent time in an empathic way with characters or in an artistic way, in order to tell a story in a proper way. A film is, as Flusser would describe it, “a linear sequence of pictures” (23: 2002), but this linear consecutive images don’t necessarily have to be chronological. For him, cinema “represents the world of things through projections of things and goes on a plane like the reading of pictures and not like theatre” (24: 2002). He proposes four types of time in cinema. The first one is the linear time, as in books, the linear composition makes that each picture is followed by another that keeps the same meaning in order to make a whole message. The second type of time is the one that keeps going inside each shot, every picture that moves itself, what we could call real time, which Doane describes as “the duration of a single shot” (172: 2002) and that normally matches the profilmic time. In this stadium, Doane says that “the time of the apparatus matches the time of the action or the scene” (173: 2002). The third type of time, according to Flusser, would be the time that takes us as spectators to read and assimilate the message of each shot. Finally, he brings to the table the time meant by the story, the one we call diegetical time, which don’t necessarily matches the real time of the shooting, the second one. The diegetical time can be flexible. A shot may be shown in slow motion or in speed, starting in the morning and ending with the night and having just 2 minutes of duration, or even less. Time inside the film is a perception for the audience watching and that time serves the author to create the piece as long as he/ she wants it to be. For example, in Blue is the Warmest Color (2013) in the diegetic time level, we are told the whole story of the life of Adele in just three hours of filmic time, while in Run, Lola, Run (1998), the diegetic story time is 20 minutes, but the film duration is 75 minutes. Cinema can expand or contract time.

On her behalf, Doane says that “cinema attempts to reconstitute movement with a series of still photographs, but none of these photographs has anything to do with movement” (174: 2002). This achievement, the illusion of movement from still pictures, is due to the movement of the apparatus, thanks to the movement of the machine, pictures can also be in motion. Time is the added factor to photography that makes movement possible. “The cinematic image appears as the imprint of time, its automatic rendering and recording“ (185: 2002), but for cinema, following the real time is just seen as a limitation. With the editing and montage “the possibility of an interruption on the linear movement of the film strip” (184: 2002) is born. This means that thanks to montage, cinema permits manipulation of time and cinematic temporality as a new and different form of time, that is not real time nor the diegetic. Hence, cinema presents us a simulacrum of time rather than time itself. In each shot we find the representation of motion in time with the visible light, but according to Bergson in Doane’s text, “movement takes place in the interval, in the transition between states, not in their accumulation. This explains the profound unreality of cinematic ‘real time’.” (174: 2002). Bergson claims that movement can’t be reconstituted from immobilities while Doane maintains that cinema has demonstrated that movement can and is born from immobilities, because “the appearance of movement is movement because it is always visual” (176: 2002).

Mostly of the cinema of history is been presented as a chronological and continuous series of events. In primitive films, we could see the magic of the cut in films such as A Trip to the Moon (1902) to create some short of special effects, optical effects to stimulate and excite the audience. Nevertheless, these films were also chronological, because each shot followed the previous one in time. However, nowadays, authors have dared to risk with profilmic time and they experiment with the montage on different ways of storytelling. Doane presents Deleuze’s believes, saying that “the essence of the cinematic is not visible until time can be disengaged from the movement of bodies within the diegesis and articulated through montage” (184: 2002). For example, in Memento (2000), Christopher Nolan presents his film back forwards. Each scene in single view is chronological but scenes between them are not correlative, the start of the film is the last scene. After this one, the penultimate scene is the one that follows, and that goes on until we see the first scene of the story as the last scene of the film. Time is controlled to make the audience think one thing, while there’s another one happening. This is what we call mindgame films. In Run, Lola, Run (1998) the author plays with time in a different way. He suggests a realm where Lola, the main protagonist, has a mission to accomplish, but she is condemned to fail. The meganarrator gives her more than one opportunity and plays with time by going back in time until the start of the mission so she can attempt again and again until she reaches her goal. This short of presentation makes me think about a game in which, when you fail, you have the opportunity of trying again. Then, time is played by the film in a way that only cinema could bring. Real time, in real life, gives no second chances. In this cases, as Doane indicates, “time is part of the experience for the spectator” (184: 2002).

Film editing permits time travel, time stop, flashbacks, flash-forwards, a view of past and future events, slow and speed motion and repetition. On the one hand, in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Alfonso Cuarón, 2004) Hermione uses her Time Turner to assist to different classes that take part at the same time by going to the past and choosing another module. Later on the film, Harry and Hermione have to turn back in time to save Sirius Black from being condemned unjustly, and there’s a really special shot in which they stay in normal time while everyone else goes back forward in speed time. The second part of the film is seen from two different points of view as a repetition, which is very interesting and crucial to understand the plot fully. The repetition shows the same actions from different angles. On the other hand, in Run, Lola, Run (1998) the repetition is used in a different way. Each time that the countdown goes to zero, the story remains the same, but the way of arriving to the goal is different. The repetition shows the same goal but in different actions. It is outlined like a non interactive video-game for the spectator: each time that Lola can’t save Manni, her boyfriend, by bringing the money, the countdown comes to its end and the twenty minutes time starts again and again until she reaches it. Unlike in real life, Lola ’s subconscious remembers everything that have happened the time before, so she can learn about it and make it better. For example, the first time on the robbery of the supermarket, Manni teaches her to control the security guard’s gun and in the second attempt, she robs the guard’s gun of her father’s office and knows exactly how to use it, without the need of an explanation.

Right from the beginning, Tom Tikwer is obsessed with showing us a lot of clocks. Time is going to be a crucial part of the film and he inscribes his name on a clock’s pendulum before the credits (Figure 1). The film is structured in a very interesting manner: there’s eleven minutes of introduction in which the plot is explained: Manni owe 100.000 marks to a drug-dealer and has 20 minutes to recover the stolen bag with the money in order to not be killed. Lola plans how to get the money from her father by then and arrive where Manni is in time. After that, the film starts. Lola has three attempts, twenty minutes each, and we realise that filmic time and diegetic time coincide: each attempt in the profilmic time are twenty minutes and the real time of the film is also twenty minutes. This time is followed by clocks all over the film. When Lola is at home after hanging the phone call with Manni, a clock is shown with twenty minutes to twelve (Figure 2). This determinate the time of the film and the diegetic time. Spectators look carefully the time shown on the clocks because it is crucial for the narration, because is Lola gets a minute late, Manni could die (Figures 3, 4). This control and obsession of time passing inexorably via clocks, reminds of the bomb scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage (1945), where the kid carried the bomb all over London to get in time to the destination, but fails, killing everyone inside the tram.

Mary Ann Doane defines editing as the deliberate construction of a diegesis, a concerted effort for a coherent relation to filmic space and time. Editing permits us see the actions in the proper space and from the best angle (or the angle the author wants us to see) to save time by the ellipsis of the cut. In Run, Lola Run (1998), we find the three logics of editing applied. The logic of repetition, in which a change of position of the camera instigates a repetition of a narrative event, is used as a big narrative conductor. Lola repeats three times her mission to save Manni, and in each time, the camera is changing the position to show us a new unexpected ending. The logic of the chase, the insistent linearisation of time, is used as in Meet Me at the Fountain (Siegmund Lubin, 1904), to follow the run of Lola. She’s always presented running, chasing Manni (and the money) and shot from the back or going forward the camera. This chasing makes the

film dynamic enough to make the twenty minutes of the diegetic time match twenty minutes of real time. Atypically and unlike in classic cinema, the chase is not motivated by a persecution, but by a desire of protection and love. Lola is the one that has to save Manni, and just like in the old classical movies, the “woman” is saved on the “nick of time” and followed by a final kiss that confirms the continuity of the start of the film because that kiss represents a crucial event for the narration as the equilibrium is been restored. However, the logic of parallel editing is the one that is most represented in this film. In this dramatisation of time, each shot implies a progression and when the film starts again, we see again some shots that may seem the same, but have evolved with Lola’s last attempt. The parallel editing is usually used in horror films as a creator of tension. This logic uses the alternation of the stories that are happening simultaneously, mostly between Lola, her father and Manni but this simultaneity between the three is also shown with a parted screen sometimes (Figures 8, 9).

Clocks are also important and the parted screen shows Manni anxious about time and getting ready for robbing the supermarket and, as the same time, Lola running to get to him on time to stop him. The clock determines the whole action, and that’s why it is added at the parted screen when the watch hand reaches twelve o’clock (Figure 9). The simultaneity is proved on the beginning with the phone call, that situates them in the same time moment on a shot/reverse shot (Figures 5,6). The film is very dynamic, people moves anxiously and Lola is usually running: the hurry of movement denotes the passing of time.

Hence, cinema presents time as something manipulable, as Doane supports, and this is what makes the cinematic experience unique. If we watched a film without time manipulation, cinema wouldn’t have been such an exit. As we’ve been able to confirm, film can expand or contract time, cut or even stop time, so the linear time in cinema is totally eradicated. Real time in film is normally absent, because between shots, the apparatus changing wastes time we’re not taking in consideration while watching and we enjoy this time manipulation that, actually, saves us a lot of time. On Run, Lola, Run (1998), the time is like another character in the scene, as we have discovered in its narration condition, so time is always in consideration while the hurry and the countdown run. On this film, cinema adapts the actual screening time to the diegetic countdown and creates a sense of simultaneity and reality that wouldn’t have achieved otherwise. Also montage is a very important part of time saving, because the editing constructs the narration in an understandable but unreal way to make it easy to keep track of the progression of events. The discontinuity of montage and the duration of the individual frames in motion creates a feeling of warmth and reality that is accomplished thanks to time. However, the internal structure of film as a medium needs time to develop the narration properly. As we’ve seen before, cinema has the ability of creating a time(less) illusion with which it can tell full stories in a short period of time by picking what’s most interesting and visually pleasant, leaving everything else in an ellipse.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Doan, Mary Ann (2002): “Zeno’s Paradox: The Emergence of Cinematic Time” in

The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive. Cambridge,

London: Harvard University Press (pp. 172-205)

Flusser, Vilém (2002): “Line and Surface”, in Writings, Electronic Mediations Vol.6,

edited Andreas Strohl, translator Erik Eisel, Minneapolis, London: University of

Minnesota Press (pp. 21-34)

FILMOGRAPHY

Cuarón, Alfonso (2004): Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Heyday Films,

Warner Bros)

Hitchcock, Alfred (1936): Sabotage (Gaumont British Picture Corporation)

Kechiche, Abdellatif (2013): La vie d’Adèle (Blue is the Warmest Color) (Wild

Bunch / Quat'sous Films / France 2 Cinema / Scope Pictures / Vértigo Films / RTBF

(Télévision Belge) / Canal+ / Ciné+)

Lubin, Siegmund (1904): Meet Me at the Fountain (S. Lubin)

Méliès, George (1902): Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) (Star Film)

Tykwer, Tom (1998): Run, Lola, Run (X Filme Creative Pool, Westdeutscher

Rundfunk (WDR))