The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

94 p.o.v. number 13 March 2002
What the camera shows as it pans to the right might be described
as a series of tableaus or still photographs rather than moving
images. There is movement, to be sure – birds flying over the field,
men walking across the frame pulling a small carriage – but in
general the movement within the frame is kept to a minimum. Also,
the movement within the frame (at this point of the film) is not
"action"; it doesn't make things happen and it is more like part of the
scenery. Or it is as if a movement had been added to a still
photograph. The wind that makes people's clothes move slightly
while they themselves are standing still is at times the only indicator
of the fact that we are watching a moving image rather than a still
photograph. The main movement remains that of the camera.
This disparity between the steady movement of the camera and
the virtual absence of movement within the frame gives the film a
peculiar kind of temporality. On the one hand, there is the world of
the film, which seems to be at a standstill. On the other hand, there
is the movement that lets that world be seen, the movement of the
camera. There is a world where time seems to have stopped. And
there is the movement of a gaze, which is also the gaze of the
impatient spectator, who is waiting for the moment of the answer,
the moment of seeing. In a sense, the time of the film is not running
on the screen but in the spectator's mind. It is the time of waiting,
the time of a question about to be answered.
The answer...
Finally the camera reaches the scene toward which the women are
looking. The scene is revealed only gradually. First, a group of
people is seen looking to the right. In the background a man-like
figure is seen hanging from a post. A scarecrow? Or a hanged man?