Timecode
Written and Directed by: Mike Figgis
Starring: Xander Berkeley, Golden Brooks, Richard Edson, Salma Hayek, and many more

When I hear someone refer to a film as “experimental”, I often think of something that is artsy, strange, and hard to understand. To some extent, these observations can be true. Timecode, however, is truly an experimental film, not because it is artsy and strange, but rather, because it tries something with the medium that has never been done before. (At least, not to my knowledge.) And as with most experiments, it was somewhat unknown exactly what the resulting film would look like.

In Timecode, the movie screen is divided up into 4 frames, and each frame simultaneously displays different footage. The action that occurs in each frame is not completely random however. There is a story, and the different frames simply present what different characters are doing at the same moment in time.

The movie was shot in 4 consecutive takes, one for each camera, and the actors improvised around a basic story outline. That being said, you have to give a lot of credit to the actors in this movie for making it more than just an experiment by giving the movie substance and by bringing forth some memorable characters.

When I first heard about this movie, I was very interested just to find out what the viewing experience would be like. As the movie starts, they try to ease you into the odd format by starting with one frame, and then slowly introducing the other 3 frames. It still takes some getting used to however. At first you have the urge to try and take in every detail. Your eyes will flit back and forth between the different frames, afraid of missing an important part of the story.

Viewing becomes easier however, once you learn to allow the sound mixing to direct your attention. When the sound for one particular frame becomes louder than the others, you focus on that one instead. In addition to this, many of the scenes are slow and drawn out anyways, so there really is no risk of missing out on anything important.

The story itself is not really much of a story; in reality it exists only to facilitate the unique method of storytelling. It doesn’t really lead anywhere, but you are so busy enjoying the multiple camera experience that you don’t really care. What is important here is how the story is told, rather than the story itself. This is one of the reasons why you can miss some of the action going on in the various frames without detracting from your enjoyment of the movie.Actually, I think that if there was a really involved story going on, it would probably be frustrating to watch in this manner.One thing I would like to note is that the movie is quite humourous. There are a lot of amusing characters and funny moments, even early on, but personally I didn’t catch on to the humour until I had gotten comfortable with the viewing process.

In Timecode, they use the multiple camera effect in some really interesting ways. There are some particularly cool moments when different characters converge on a scene together and so you see the action unfold from two (or more) different angles. There is also a lot of interesting use of sound from different points of view. During a good portion of the movie one character plants a listening device on another character and eavesdrops, so you hear the dialogue from two points of view.

Another thing that I noticed is that there were some points in the movie where the images in each of the 4 frames suddenly mirror each other almost exactly. This was obviously planned by the director, but it’s really cool how they match up at specific points in the movie, which I suppose can be seen as a comment on the things in life that people all have in common.They used the multiple angles to do a lot of cool things, but for some reason I also strangely felt that there was some potential here for something more that was perhaps left untapped.

Timecode is definitely a movie intended for the attention deficit disorder generation, was a really innovative idea and I think everyone should see it just because it is a unique viewing experience. For obvious reasons, this is also a movie with a lot of replay potential. You’ll probably want to go back and watch it all over again to see what you missed the first time, but even if you only watch it once, you should feel satisfied and perhaps even somewhat enlightened. — Sean