The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

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28 p.o.v. number 13 March 2002 say that every shot at this level represents life. The second level in the film, the physiological level, portrays the change of the body in the development from fetus to extreme old age. Here every shot comes to represent time. The third level is what we are calling a psychological/social level, where the focus is the transformation of the individual in the development from childhood to adulthood and finally old age; on this level every shot represents experience. Letting these two levels (the physiological/sensual and the psychological/social) run simultaneously, The Face of Time creates a fusion of body and consciousness. This is one of the pillars of philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological thoughts and philosophy concerning the body. He states that consciousness is shaped through the body. The body is the subject of the personality, and it is through the body that we are present in the world, speak, experience, and are in contact with things; it is life itself. Hence, it is via the body that the individual becomes a consciousness or soul that believes it is something in itself. The Face of Time deals with this process, as consciousness and experience develop simultaneously with the aging of the body. The film also focuses on the contact of the bodies with one another, with water and with other things. The film presents different shapes of bodies and consciousnesses, but they all experience the same development. Thus, each individual in the film has more of a metonymical function, in contrast to a metaphorical one, where each individual must be viewed autonomously. The narrative structure and the presentation of different individuals therefore do not emphasize individuality, but instead accentuate that some life processes are the same for everyone. Translation: Susanne Stranddorf
A Danish Journal of Film Studies 29 The Face of Time and life's trajectory Thomas Bjørner The Face of Time shows in a very lyrical and metaphorical way a number of faces typical of various stages in life. The doubleness of the title contains the essence of the overall theme, in that the film not only portrays a variety of typical states of mind in the year 2000, but also depicts how human beings age, in an inevitable and natural process over time, from the beginning of life towards death – a state of gradual decay. The sole setting of the film is a Swedish bathhouse, a closed room with women only. The female paradigm elucidates “life,” for life is after all conceived from women. The bathhouse serves as a contrast to a reality outside, yet at the same time as a mirror to the real world. The Face of Time takes its point of departure in a shot of a pregnant woman, the beginning of life. Next, we see a newborn baby lying helpless and totally dependent in its mother’s arms. In the following shots, the baby slowly frees itself from the mother and progresses from carefully crawling around while exploring the world to washing its own hair. The mother/child relationship is at one and the same time inseparable and separable: inseparable because the umbilical cord once connected child and mother, and separable because the child needs to free itself from the mother. A child pushing away a baby doll in the water portrays this metaphorically. Yet the child is not ready to free itself totally and therefore quickly catches the doll again. Later, two girls playing
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The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

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