The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

A Danish Journal of Film Studies 79
The second part of the film establishes a point of view just at the
spot where client meets clerk, the glass dividing civic society and
state bureaucracy. In this part of the film the focus is mostly from
inside and out, so we see and identify with the clients. However, we
also see the clerk for the first time. In the following parts, the point
of view changes rather rapidly between the inside and finally also
the outside view, the clients’ point of view on the clerk. Again the
image-sound relation and the framing are very symbolic. Even
though for the first time in the film, we are able to hear speech in
sync and thus identify a client speaking directly to the clerk and
(though without ever seeing lips move) also the clerk answering,
then on and off the film lapses back to the more impersonal offscreen
dialogue. This underlines the inhuman, alienated relation
and conversation. The framing of the clerk is at the same time just as
symbolic and disembodied as the client’s in the first part. What we
see are hands filling out forms, hands sharpening a pencil, and not
in one shot is it possible to establish a kind of direct eye contact
between clerk and client. The film only shows facial shots of clerks
looking to the side or down.
The third and last part of the film is even more explicit in its
Kafkaesque view. It starts with the only completely silent sequence
of the film. We see the clerk preparing her afternoon tea, and with
the words, “Wait a moment,” all the clients just wait in line, silent,
while she drinks her tea. When the dialogue is resumed we are back
in the completely random relation between dialogue and pictures:
we see a series of different people in at the window, but none of
them speak; the dialogue comes out of thin air and seems to live a
life of its own. This aspect is gradually underlined and strengthened
by intercuts from the deep backstage of the office, the archive. Here