The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

A Danish Journal of Film Studies 35
the women, their faces, are used as a way of showing the audience
that the effects of time can be seen in our physical presence in space?
As I see it, this mechanism works the other way around, lending the
quality of time to the "face" in the title. Time is literally shown as
part of our existence, and what the visual poetry of the film brings
to the screen as a visible fact is this: all stages of life are present
simultaneously. All the time, as it were.
The aesthetic principle
Some of the shots, or scenes as we might call them, deserve special
attention, because they can lead us to an understanding of an
important principle of the film's aesthetic practice, if not the most
important visual pattern. The most elaborate shots are nos. 28, 30,
and 31, near the end (the film has a total of 32 shots).
To take the last one first: The woman at the center of shot 31,
probably the oldest of them all, perhaps apart from the lady in the
very last scene, is shown with two young women swimming in the
pool behind her. In a very elaborate movement the camera tracks to
the right, moving from the swimmers to the old lady. Simultaneously
panning slightly to the left, it centers her in the frame, at the
same time bringing another young woman in sight to the left. So,
while she is sitting in front, the film's aesthetic patterning of the
material brings her together with the other, young and beautiful,
characters populating the space. Her old body and her resignation is
combined with the beauty and healthiness of the others and
accentuated in definite contrast to them.
Before that, shot 30 shows a woman, perhaps in her late seventies,
working on her make-up and checking it in a mirror. Before doing
so she draws a curtain to the left behind her to have a little privacy.