The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

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36 p.o.v. number 13 March 2002 However, it only blocks out part of the space in the background, and so, like her colleague in shot 31, she is also seen together with some of the other women. Contrary to this, the woman in shot 29 is shown in her own little locker room. On the one hand the bird's-eye view may be said to make her look lonely, but on the other she seems to be enjoying a peaceful moment for private reflection. Perhaps the most complicated and elaborate shot is no. 28. From the close-up of the very wrinkled hand of an old woman, an upward tilt and change of focus bring other women behind her in sight. One younger woman passes through the frame from background right towards foreground left. Her disappearance makes another young woman in the showers visible. While she is seen talking to a somewhat older woman, the camera continues its combination of tilt and pan left to end in a close-up of the old woman's face. She is wearing a ring; her earrings are in place; nail polish and make-up too; her hair is carefully done. She obviously still takes an interest in how her beauty and personality present themselves to the world. The analyses of these shots show the heart of the film's aesthetic – as well as its poetic and human – principle. Meticulously staged and carefully choreographed it brings different ages together and integrates them into a whole: representations of life. Having analyzed these key shots it becomes apparent that this structure is at work in the film as a whole. (The sound is another element that greatly contributes to the unity of the film. Voices and noises are used very effectively to support the visual montage of characters and ages, and the subtle use of music binds the shots together and also adds to different moods). Different ages and the characters that represent them have their own moments in the foreground. But at
A Danish Journal of Film Studies 37 the same time we have this simultaneous presence of other ages of life. Mirrors Another way to describe the principle of holding different characters together within the space of each frame is to see them as stages of life mirroring each other. When the audience comprehends the poetic world of the frame, what is seen is not another girl or young woman beside or behind an old lady, but a symbolic version of what she may have been; and the other way around: from the baby's and girl's point of view the women are incarnations of possible futures in life. As we have seen, the mirror structure is an integral part of the film's aesthetic practice, and I shall just mention one more example. The shot mentioned above with the young woman in streaming, bubbling water and the next one with the woman in the solarium, mirror each other. Apart from the wet woman juxtaposed with the dry and warm one, a pan in one direction is met by one in the other. Girls and women mirror themselves in each other. From a certain age in their teens we see them concentrating on their own mirror images. Both mirror in a literal sense, and their surroundings create pictures of them in their own as well as other people's eyes. In a way they even mirror themselves in the gaze of the audience. On the other hand, also the director, the poet, the painter of the pictures as well as the audience mirror themselves and their/our fate in the girls and the women through the gaze of the camera. In the mirror of the film we see and reflect upon our own born or unborn children, their childhood and adolescence, our life and the time
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