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Movie Review: 'Timecode'

Looking back on the first movie I ever reviewed.

By Sean PatrickPublished 5 years ago 3 min read
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I began writing about movies in the year 2000. For reasons that I cannot begin to fathom, the first movie I ever wrote about—for a long since discarded and forgotten blog—was Mike Figgis's bizarre, experimental failure, Timecode. Released in August of 2000, Timecode stars an ensemble cast that included Danny Huston, Salma Hayek, Holly Hunter, and Saffron Burrows in disparate stories told via what looks like several different security cameras.

For a movie that features Kyle McLachlan as a guy named Bunny, Timecode sure was wildly, stunningly, dull. At the box office, in 2000, Timecode was far more interestingly a flop, despite a mere $4 million dollar budget. The film earned less than $1 million dollars during the brief time it occupied screens in major markets, never making it outside of the largest markets where just about any movie on the planet is capable of finding a few screens.

I have always made a point of praising anyone in Hollywood who attempts something risky and different. Especially directors who attempt to reshape images for the pursuit of some strange cinematic vision. Auteurs like Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmusch, and Mike Figgis attempt things that are sometimes spectacular and other times are spectacular failures. Mike Figgis's 2000 feature, Timecode, sadly falls into the latter category.

Here is where I would normally do a plot recap, but since I'm entirely uncertain whether there was a plot, I'll describe some of the characters portrayed by Figgis' all-star cast. Model, Saffron Burrows, is a troubled young wife married to a jerk husband, Stellen Skaarsgaard, who is cheating on her with a would-be actress, played by Salma Hayek. Hayek is carrying on a lesbian affair with a cocaine-addicted lawyer, played by Jeanne Tripplehorn, and Kyle Mclachlan drops in playing a guy named Bunny.

That about covers it. The films main conceit is the stylistic adventure of simultaneous cameras on different characters all onscreen at the same time. The screen is divided in four pieces with a storyline being carried out in each square. It sounds confusing; it is confusing. But director Figgis lessens the confusion, somewhat, by making the sound louder on whichever storyline is most interesting at a particular moment.

I'm struggling to call any of the four storylines interesting, let alone stories. They come off more like dull coincidences. Many of us are familiar with the many L.A. stereotypes and Figgis' characters do nothing to undermine the clichés. Indeed Figgis has taken the most stereotypical group of coked-up, sex-starved, vapid, self obsessed Angelinos and plopped them down in front of camera's to capture the single dullest hour and a half in their coked-up, sex-starved, vapid, self obsessed lives.

As horrendous as the whole endeavor is, Figgis at least stylistically gave it the old college try. The invention was there, the product is not. Timecode is a waste of effort on the part of a daring and unique director. Figgis was likely bored by doing the same old same old and I understand his desire to mix things up. Timecode however, was not the experiment we would all hope for.

Vapid, narcissistic, and yet somehow bland and flavorless, Timecode is a bizarre relic of my nearly 20 years writing about movies, one that doesn't deserve the distinction as my first movie writing experience. And yet, it was. I wrote only about 300 words, give or take, artlessly and amateurishly poking fun at Timecode, especially loving talking about Kyle McLachlan playing a guy named Bunny.

Mike Figgis hasn't directed a feature film since the god-awful 2003 "thriller," Cold Creek Manor. That was a far more straight forward bad movie than Timecode. It failed nearly as spectacularly as Timecode, but on a larger scale being far less of an indie gamble and more of a genuine studio movie. Since then, Figgis has directed numerous short films and television shows, including a strong piece of work on Showtime's The Affair.

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About the Creator

Sean Patrick

Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.

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