Doing Time

Lee Carruthers

Description

Doing Time addresses two areas of interest in recent film study—film temporality and film philosophy—to propose an innovative theorization of cinematic time that sees it as a dynamic process of engagement, or something we do as viewers. This active relation to cinematic time, which discloses a film's temporal character, is called its "timeliness." Here it is traced across a range of fascinating case studies from Hollywood and the global art cinema, uncovering each film's characteristic way of "doing time." Throughout, the ambiguities of filmic time are held as powerful attractions as they modulate film viewing: such pauses, gaps, repetitions, and stretches of time illuminate a living field that extends from viewing activity.

Drawing on the writings of French film critic and theorist André Bazin, as well as the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Lee Carruthers forwards a claim about the value of cinematic time for thinking. She also raises the tasks of film analysis and interpretation to renewed visibility. By prioritizing the viewer's experience of filmic temporality, and offering a rich vocabulary for describing this exchange, Carruthers articulates a new sphere of theoretical inquiry that invites film viewers (and readers) to participate.
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Timeliness and Contemporary Cinema

2. Biding Our Time: Rethinking the Familiar in Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey

3. Back and Forth: Reading Reverse Chronology in François Ozon’s 5x2

4. Enduring Time: Temporal Duration in Tsai Ming-liang’s What Time Is It There?

5. Deep Time: Methods of Montage in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life

Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Film
• History of film
• Visual culture
• Película fotográfica

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 06 juin 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438460871
• Langue: English

Extrait

Doing Time
Also in the series
William Rothman, editor, Cavell on Film
J. David Slocum, editor, Rebel Without a Cause
Joe McElhaney, The Death of Classical Cinema
Kirsten Moana Thompson, Apocalyptic Dread
Frances Gateward, editor, Seoul Searching
Michael Atkinson, editor, Exile Cinema
Paul S. Moore, Now Playing
Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann, Ecology and Popular Film
William Rothman, editor, Three Documentary Filmmakers
Sean Griffin, editor, Hetero
Jean-Michel Frodon, editor, Cinema and the Shoah
Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Constantine Verevis, editors, Second Takes
Matthew Solomon, editor, Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination
R. Barton Palmer and David Boyd, editors, Hitchcock at the Source
William Rothman, Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze, Second Edition
Joanna Hearne, Native Recognition
Marc Raymond, Hollywood’s New Yorker
Steven Rybin and Will Scheibel, editors, Lonely Places, Dangerous Ground
Claire Perkins and Constantine Verevis, editors, B Is for Bad Cinema
Dominic Lennard, Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors
Rosie Thomas, Bombay before Bollywood
Scott M. MacDonald, Binghamton Babylon
Sudhir Mahadevan, A Very Old Machine
David Greven, Ghost Faces
James S. Williams, Encounters with Godard
William H. Epstein and R. Barton Palmer, editors, Invented Lives, Imagined Communities
Doing Time
Temporality, Hermeneutics, and Contemporary Cinema

Lee Carruthers
Cover image: “Thanksgiving Chapel Window” courtesy of photographer Helen Powell.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2016 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Ryan Morris
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Carruthers, Lee, [date]
Title: Doing time : temporality, hermeneutics, and contemporary cinema / Lee Carruthers.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2015. | Series: SUNY series, horizons of cinema | Based on the author’s thesis (doctoral)—University of Chicago, 2008. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015026348 | ISBN 9781438460857 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438460871 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Time in motion pictures.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.T55 C38 2015 | DDC 791.43/684—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015026348
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Charles and Laurel
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Timeliness and Contemporary Cinema
2. Biding Our Time: Rethinking the Familiar in Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey
3. Back and Forth: Reading Reverse Chronology in François Ozon’s 5x2
4. Enduring Time: Temporal Duration in Tsai Ming-liang’s What Time Is It There?
5. Deep Time: Methods of Montage in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Figure 2.1. Opening title from The Limey (Steven Soderbergh, 1999)
Figure 2.2. Name on an envelope. From The Limey.
Figure 2.3. Wilson, coming and going. From The Limey.
Figure 2.4. Terence Stamp in Poor Cow (Ken Loach, 1967). From The Limey.
Figure 2.5. Soderbergh’s image of a young Jenny. From The Limey.
Figure 3.1. Lawyer’s office. From 5x2 (François Ozon, 2004).
Figure 3.2. Gilles’s phone call. From 5x2.
Figure 3.3. A hopeful picture. From 5x2.
Figure 3.4. Early encounter. From 5x2.
Figure 3.5. An enframed cliché. From 5x2.
Figure 4.1. Opening scene from What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang, 2001).
Figure 4.2. Time-keeping. From What Time Is It There?
Figure 4.3. Watching Truffaut. From What Time Is It There?
Figure 4.4. Drifting time. From What Time Is It There?
Figure 4.5. Final shot from What Time Is It There?
Figure 5.1. Light. From The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011).
Figure 5.2. Shadow. From The Tree of Life.
Figure 5.3. Sunflower frame left. From The Tree of Life.
Figure 5.4. Sunflower frame right. From The Tree of Life.
Figure 5.5. Cropped composition. From The Tree of Life.
Figure 5.6. Clown. From The Tree of Life.
Figure 5.7. Immersion. From The Tree of Life.
Acknowledgments
I’m fortunate to have received many kinds of support while writing this book, which I will attempt to enumerate here. This project began as a dissertation at the University of Chicago, where I was delighted to work with Tom Gunning, whose intellectual generosity and friendship has been sustaining throughout this process. Tom’s way of responding to films (and other texts) is inspiring—and remains the best hermeneutical model I’ve encountered. I’m grateful also to Jim Lastra, whose keen engagement improved this project in many ways in its early stages. I also wish to thank Yuri Tsivian for lending expertise at key moments; and of course Miriam Hansen, who insisted I come to Chicago in the first place. Thanks are due to Michael Forster for inviting me to sit in on his courses at Chicago, and to Kristin Gjesdal for sharing her early work on Gadamer with me. More recently, an early version of one of this book’s chapters was delivered as a paper at the annual conference for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies: I’m indebted to Richard Neer for his considered response to that talk, and for his thoughts on Terrence Malick’s cinema more generally.
In another way, my interest in this book’s material is more long-standing, initiated in my master’s degree with Charles O’Brien, who introduced me to hermeneutics, and Laura U. Marks, who showed me the value of good phenomenological description. Casting back even earlier, I’m grateful to Charlie Keil for setting the bar so high, and for his continued support. Thanks also to Bart Testa, who once told me that he reads hermeneutics in the dark, when no one is looking.
My research for this project was initiated with the support of Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Josephine De Kármán Fellowship Trust, and concluded with material support from the University Research Grants Committee at the University of Calgary. It was bolstered by my participation in the Cinematic Times Symposium at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2013; my thanks goes to Natalia Brizuela for her invitation, and to all who contributed to that lively event. The enthusiastic energies of Murray Pomerance have been instrumental to this book’s publication, as well as James Peltz, Rafael Chaiken, Ryan Morris, and everyone at SUNY Press who facilitated the process. This book also benefits from the excellent advice provided by its anonymous readers, and from the talent of Helen Powell, who supplied the beautiful image on its cover.
A range of friends, colleagues, and like-minded individuals deserve mention here for their kindness and assistance. At the University of Calgary, I want to thank Charlene Elliot, James Ellis, Erina Harris, Dawn Johnston, Barbara Schneider, and Lisa Stowe. In other places, I’m grateful to know Courtney Augustine, Matt Hauske, Nathan Holmes, Alyson Hrynyk, Andrew Johnston, Brendan Kredell, Dan Morgan, Inga Pollman, Scott Richmond, and Allison Whitney. My long-standing friendships with Gillian Roberts and Theresa Scandiffio predate this book’s formulation, and will outlast it. A special kind of acknowledgment goes to the students who have tested this book’s ideas, in various forms, as participants in my senior seminar. My sincere thanks goes to this group for causing me to think though the material more concretely, and for responding to it so creatively. I cannot name everyone here, but will point to Val Baravi, Felicia Glatz, Voytek Jarmula, Pat Matthews, Dillan Newman, and Julien Testa as key contributors to this conversation.
Thanks also to my family for their support: my mother, Maureen, Scott, and Tanya—and on the other side, Lorne, Sandy, Ruth, Margie, and Heather for their help at many crucial moments.
Finally, Charles Tepperman has patiently endured this book’s first formulation through to its completion, which is surely gift enough. But my gratitude for his intellectual and personal support is more extensive. Charles’s research has always been a source of inspiration for my own, and his thoughts about this project at different stages have been invaluable. While he cannot be held accountable for the flaws in this work, in some sense he has facilitated all of its brightest moments. My profound thanks to Laurel, as well, who understands time better than any of us.
Some of the ideas developed in Chapter 1 appeared in “M. Bazin et le Temps: Reclaiming the Timeliness of Cinematic Time,” Screen 52, no. 1, Spring 2011. A version of chapter 2 was published as “Biding Our Time: Rethinking the Familiar in Soderbergh’s The Limey ,” Film Studies: An International Review 6, Winter 2006.
Introduction
When you see a movie, try to guess the moment when a shot has given its all and must move on, end, be replaced either by changing the angle, the distance, or the field. You will get to know that constriction of the chest produced by an overlong shot which breaks the movement and that deliciously intimate acquiescence when a shot fades at the right moment.
—Roger Leenhardt, “Le Rhythme Cinématographique” (1936)

T HIS BOOK IS MOTIVATED NOT just by filmic images and sounds, but by their affective correlation. It’s about the way images cling to each other in a lingering dissolve, are stretched across time by musical phrasing, or are palpably severed by a cut. It’s about the situation that