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Review: 'Time Code' features four screens, one mess
(CNN) -- Mike Figgis' "Time Code" is a bold experiment in movie narrative that runs in breathless circles while accomplishing very little.
Figgis, who's obviously come to view himself as a provocative artiste since the surprise success of 1995's "Leaving Las Vegas," shot the entire movie in digital video. Much has been made of this approach, but he's hardly the first director to hop on board what many people are viewing as the last great hope for democratizing commercial cinema.
However, Figgis takes the immediacy of video a step further. "Time Code" is composed of four roaming cameras that record several periodically intertwining plotlines. The four takes are continuous, with no editing breaking the "purity" of the shots. The screen is then split into four quadrants, with the all the stories playing simultaneously throughout the movie's 90-minute running time.
Pay close attention
Your attention is drawn to certain sections of the screen when Figgis raises or lowers the volume of the various soundtracks in the mix. Your own guess as to what information may be important from one minute to the next also comes into play. Woe be unto anyone who looks at the wrong character at the wrong time.
Admittedly, it's interesting for a little while to process information like this, but Figgis is obviously more interested in raising his own banner as a groundbreaker than he is in telling a worthy story.
After about 15 minutes, there's no reason to watch this thing except out of sheer curiosity. You keep hoping that the miasma of wandering information can reach a decent conclusion, but don't hold your breath. If you want it to add up to something, you'll have to use the same calculator that Figgis was using when he devised the technique.
Most of the film was improvised, with only a rough outline guiding the actors from one moment to the next. And that's exactly how it plays.
Characters, characters, characters
Obviously, it's a bit difficult to lay the story out in standard terms, so it's probably best to just describe the characters. Jeanne Tripplehorn plays Salma Hayek's rich, jealous lover. Hayek is a struggling actress who may or may not be cheating on Tripplehorn. Stellan Skarsgard is a drug-addicted exec at a film production company.
All kinds of people are running around the film offices, including Holly Hunter and Steven Weber as Skarsgard's concerned co-workers, and Julian Sands as a masseuse who's giving everyone free shiatsu sessions as some kind of corporate-sponsored come-on. A sexy young actress slinks around and does coke in the ladies room with a hard-partying security guard. There's also a harried film director and various secretaries hopping in and out of the picture.
Meanwhile, Saffron Burrows is pouring her heart out to a shrink at a nearby psychoanalyst's office. She eventually leaves the session and wanders down to the film building, where we find out that she's married to Skarsgard. But Skarsgard isn't the most committed man in the world, as we and Hayek eventually discover.
Oh yeah. A minor earthquake hits the city three or four different times, the jolt of which is conveyed by shaking the cameras up and down and having the actors shimmy and/or drop to the floor. It's about as convincing as the tremors that rattle the deck of the Starship Enterprise when those pesky Klingons unload the big guns.
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Too much information
The problem here, and it's an inescapable one, is that there's simply too much information to process. Figgis has taken modern filmmaking's throw-it-all-at-'em mentality and shot it as if he's Jean-Luc Godard. One-take logistics see to it that the screen is often filled with people simply walking down the street, browsing through bookstores, or adjusting their brassieres in bathroom mirrors.
A jazz score that occasionally swells up implies that the story is reaching an emotional crescendo. But it's actually the same thing that you've been watching from the beginning, except with music behind it.
There's also no way to get involved with the characters' predicaments because there's so little chance to learn anything about them. And most of them aren't in much of a predicament, anyway.
Forget about Tripplehorn. She jealously plants a microphone on Hayek, then spends literally 80 percent of the movie in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, anxiously chewing gum while she eavesdrops. Holly Hunter's emotional film executive seems interesting for a moment or two, but you have to forget about her whenever Figgis opts to turn down the sound in her portion of the screen. And it would seem that the only reason Burrows is around, outside of her undeniable beauty, is because she's Figgis' real-life girlfriend.
The only actor who manages to break through the wall-to-wall busy-ness is Skarsgard. He's a tremendous actor who can convey mental anguish just by hanging around staring at people.
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Not a complete bust
The experiment isn't a total washout; it's nowhere near as big a waste of time as Figgis' last film, 1999's unintentionally hilarious "The Loss of Sexual Innocence."
If Figgis were to use his four-screen technique in short sequences during an otherwise conventional film, he might be able to orchestrate it in such a way as to amplify certain plot points or build tension. "Time Code"'s main accomplishment is that Figgis manages to carry on like this for an entire movie.
Late in the film, a chic young filmmaker played by Mia Maestro -- Figgis is big on chic young women -- pitches her idea for a movie to the uncomprehending executives. Her multicamera, one-take concept is a pretentious load of post-modern twaddle that name-checks Bauhaus and Eisenstein, but, in reality, is describing the supposedly brilliant film that Figgis himself has made.
It's bad enough to club the audience into submission with your technique, but even adventurous directors should draw the line at having characters tell them what they're supposed to think about the movie that they're watching.
There's some bad language in "Time Code" and some drug use. Skarsgard and Hayek also do the dirty in a screening room, although they manage it without removing their clothes. There's also a shooting, if you can put up with the shenanigans that long. In case you're wondering, the earthquakes are pointless. Rated R. 93 minutes.
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RELATED SITES:
Official 'Time Code' site
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