Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Jul 16, 2016 12:07:07 GMT -5
Timecrimes
Los Cronocrímines
Dir. Nacho Vigalondo
Premiered at Fantastic Fest September 20, 2007
I don’t remember how I first heard of Timecrimes, but it was well before I started this project, and was thrilled to see it on the list of 2007 releases.
Middle-aged couple Héctor (Karra Elejalde) and Clara (Candela Fernández) are spending their weekend at home in the woods of northern Spain. Looking through his binoculars, he sees a a young woman (Barbara Goenaga) disrobing in the woods. Going out to investigate, he is stabbed in the arm with a pair of scissors by a strange man whose face is covered in pink bandages. Pursued by his attacker, he stumbles across a mysterious labratory, where a technician (director Nacho Vigalondo) hides him in a mysterious chamber. Héctor then emerges...several hours earlier. The chamber is a time machine.
Seeing his past self at home in the distance, Héctor tries to go back, but gets into a car accident, and events spiral out of control.
Timecrimes is not terribly impressive visually, but the story is tight and controlled, and throws enough twists that it’s never clear how things might turn out, but never so much that it stops the story from making sense. The resulting film is an austere but rewarding thrill-ride with some unexpected moral subtext, and an audacious debut from a director that has, impressively, managed to keep working in science fiction– and in Spain. His next film, Colossal, is bringing him into Hollywood for the first time and is coming out soon.
Sign This Was Made in 2007
Timecrimes was shot and takes place in 2006. However, the film uniquely dates itself by its understanding of time travel. The 2000s were the golden age of the Predestination Paradox, the idea that time travel is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that its effects have already taken hold on the past. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban had a climax revolving around this concept, as would the fourth and fifth seasons of Lost in 2008-09; and just three months before Timecrimes’ debut, the classic Doctor Who episode “Blink” aired in Britain, an episode revolving entirely around circular cause-and-effect. Like “Blink,” literally all of the plot causes itself to happen through time travel. In the decade since, theoretical physics has moved on from worrying about paradoxes, and so has Hollywood.
Next Time: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Los Cronocrímines
Dir. Nacho Vigalondo
Premiered at Fantastic Fest September 20, 2007
I don’t remember how I first heard of Timecrimes, but it was well before I started this project, and was thrilled to see it on the list of 2007 releases.
Middle-aged couple Héctor (Karra Elejalde) and Clara (Candela Fernández) are spending their weekend at home in the woods of northern Spain. Looking through his binoculars, he sees a a young woman (Barbara Goenaga) disrobing in the woods. Going out to investigate, he is stabbed in the arm with a pair of scissors by a strange man whose face is covered in pink bandages. Pursued by his attacker, he stumbles across a mysterious labratory, where a technician (director Nacho Vigalondo) hides him in a mysterious chamber. Héctor then emerges...several hours earlier. The chamber is a time machine.
Seeing his past self at home in the distance, Héctor tries to go back, but gets into a car accident, and events spiral out of control.
Timecrimes is not terribly impressive visually, but the story is tight and controlled, and throws enough twists that it’s never clear how things might turn out, but never so much that it stops the story from making sense. The resulting film is an austere but rewarding thrill-ride with some unexpected moral subtext, and an audacious debut from a director that has, impressively, managed to keep working in science fiction– and in Spain. His next film, Colossal, is bringing him into Hollywood for the first time and is coming out soon.
Sign This Was Made in 2007
Timecrimes was shot and takes place in 2006. However, the film uniquely dates itself by its understanding of time travel. The 2000s were the golden age of the Predestination Paradox, the idea that time travel is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that its effects have already taken hold on the past. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban had a climax revolving around this concept, as would the fourth and fifth seasons of Lost in 2008-09; and just three months before Timecrimes’ debut, the classic Doctor Who episode “Blink” aired in Britain, an episode revolving entirely around circular cause-and-effect. Like “Blink,” literally all of the plot causes itself to happen through time travel. In the decade since, theoretical physics has moved on from worrying about paradoxes, and so has Hollywood.
Next Time: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
