For the Duration-review
For the Duration is an intriguing short film ‘about’ time. Phil Layton joins philosophical filmmakers such as Tarkovsky and Herzog who use the medium’s techniques to reveal the operations of time to the senses and the mind. The film’s subtle use of cinematic quotations (e.g. Bergman’s Seventh Seal, Clair’s Entr’acte and Deren’s At Land) and his own distinctive techniques position Layton’s work firmly in the experimental art film tradition.
From the title sequence-a distant figure crossing the skyline of a slate heap-Layton uses bold, linear composition, static camera set-ups, natural light and long-held wide-angle shots. The visual continuity of landscape lines: roads, horizons, pipe-lines, vertical pillars, dwarf the human figures they draw. Water flows are a further visual/temporal link. Rather than providing settings for drama, spectacular North Wales locations are powerfully present for their own sake. Natural light predominates apart from special effects in the final sequences. Sound is low-key and ambient with well-placed electronic chord sequences for maximum impact.
Despite thriller elements (trenchcoated protagonist, mysterious suitcase, sinister pursuer and ultimate ‘face-off’) this is clearly not a typical narrative based on psychologically rounded character interaction. It is a structural film using the camera-eye to explore mental events and the disjunction of mind and world. The viewer is invited to think as well as feel, directly experiencing time in process. Like Stalker, watching and waiting intensify perception and, as Bergson suggests, we are able to seize ‘something which outruns perception itself’.
Moving images have the unique capacity to mimic the processes of duration. By being less action–oriented, they impact on and alter our temporal awareness. Following Bergson, Deleuze considers what happens when time is not measurable by the translation of movement into action. The Time–Image is a more abstract, ‘philosophical and logical’ cinema. By restraint or ‘thinness’, such films move beyond representational norms and dramatic plotlines into mental processes stimulated by the style. For Deleuze, when the action/perception links are broken, we enter an interval where we ‘turn from exteriority or extensiveness in space toward a genesis in mental relations or time’.
Although mise-en-scène (water, forest wasteland, game pieces) seems open to symbolic interpretation, Layton’s structuralist focus looks elsewhere, providing ample space for thought. In the nocturnal town, the protagonist ‘Trenchcoat’ disappears into a dark alleyway to a hidden destination, making the viewer work at speculation. The next shot in a dial-filled storeroom remains inexplicable. The filmmaker refutes the usual shot/reaction/shot convention by showing the protagonist from the waist down. Images of his back or profile work to stymie character identification in the interests of self-reflection. Fast-moving sequences, the glowing nocturnal suspension bridge footage and animated sequences, are used sparingly to powerful effect.
Black Cagoule, Trenchcoat’s nemesis (or a split-off aspect of himself?) dogs his footsteps from the start. Trenchcoat’s private notebook (directions? map?) and a lost game-piece lead him towards an inexorable confrontation. A bird’s eye point-of-view traps his tiny figure, increasingly vulnerable to the workings of larger forces. In a rare reaction shot Trenchcoat cowers, head in hands, before rinsing his hands in a small pool and moving on. Though his adversary seems to gain on him, the pursuit seems deliberately delayed to allow necessary processes to unfold.
The mise-en-scène and pace change after Trenchcoat enters a tunnel. In this space of transition, interiority intensifies as he tunnels deeper into mind and memory. Light is expressively used. Trenchcoat traverses a liminal zone where light and dark alternate. These forces in combat are later developed via Trenchcoat (firelight) and Black Cagoule (daylight). A fire in the brazier recalls the mysterious zone locations of Stalker and the copper glow of candle-flames marks a track in ambient darkness.
Inside a roofless quarry building, extensive landscape lines shift to the enclosed squares and rectangles of interiority (doorway, projection-screen, game board) so movement becomes intensive, internal rather than spatially extended. A sudden vivid splash of foxglove magenta adds richness to predominant blue/grey tones. The anomalous burst of green/blue projector light reprieves Trenchcoat’s journey via the nested projector screen. Double and triple images of Trenchcoat’s shadow and his projected self creates a complex layering effect. He paces before his own nested reflection, out of sync like his pursuer. Fade-out to black offers an interval for the viewer to reflect.
Close-ups and animation proliferate as the combat becomes overtly internal as an entropic state of consciousness. The extreme close-up of Black Cagoule’s hypnotic stare into the camera confronts us directly. Pieces are superimposed first on Black Cagoule’s forehead then on Trenchcoat’s. Rather than a neatly tied-up narrative closure, the final, sunlit sequences remain ambiguous and open-ended as they press on into a future yet unborn. Like Bergson’s realisation about the nature of time as he waited for a sugar-cube to melt in water, Layton’s impressive film shows us, unforgettably, that ‘duration is irreversible’.
(Anna Powell, Research Fellow, Manchester Metropolitan University)