The Clock
What: Film by Christian Marclay.
When: Noon to 8 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday; noon to 9 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday through July 31.
Where: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art of the Americas building, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles.
Admission: Free with museum admission of $15, $10 seniors and students, free for children 17 and under.
At 11 a.m., people are waking up late for work, scrambling to put on clothes and start the day. Or maybe it's a day off and they're lounging in bed, or lingering over breakfast.
The same events are happening at 11 a.m. in Christian Marclay's 24-hour-long art film, "The Clock."
Likewise, at 8 p.m. in the movie and off-screen, against the New York or Los Angeles skylines and in between, friends and couples are out to concerts and the theater, primping for dinner dates and black-tie parties.
"The Clock," which screens through July 31 during museum hours at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is a daylong collage of clips from cinema and TV depicting time passing. It's not just scenes of clocks and cuckoo birds, but whatever is happening at those moments: people going about their lives, all while constantly pulling out wris****ches.
"The Clock" had its American premiere earlier this year at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York City.
Though the film will run only during museum hours from this point on, it opened with a 24-hour screening from 11 a.m. Monday to 11 a.m. Tuesday. LACMA synced up the time in the movie with real time. At 5:17 p.m. in the movie, it was 5:17 p.m. in the theater. At 1:22 p.m. in both worlds, people were working or taking lunches.
"I thought it was enjoyable," said Michael Adams, 27, of Los Angeles, who left at about 10 p.m. after watching the film for 40 minutes in the museum's Bing Theater. "I went
in there expecting a bunch of clocks ... `tick tock, tick tock.'But it created its own narrative."
Many of those who stopped by were impressed by Marclay's editing work. Transitions are flawless, the sound from one scene carrying over into another. A clip from the 1990s of a couple fighting leads into a scene of a woman waking up in the '50s, making it seem as if the quarreling duo are her next-door neighbors.
Matt McDuffie, visiting from New Mexico, found the film "totally involving" even though he spent only 15 minutes in the theater.
"It's just so mesmerizing," he said. "You swear there's a narrative. ... and you're just smiling the whole time. It's seamless, the editing's seamless. And it's amazing to see all those films you know."
"I was sitting there thinking just the amount of research, finding where the references are ... where all the shots of the clock were, just the amount of work involved in it, is impressive," he said. "The real creativity is deciding which shots go where, lining them up."
Music has a strong presence in the film, with instrumentation interspersed with songs from, among others, Lefty Frizzell, George Thorogood and the Destroyers and Radiohead.
The artwork creates a world without, strangely enough, the boundaries of time. We watch as Nicolas Cage, Walter Matthau and Meryl Streep age and grow young again before our eyes. The film convinces the audience that Sherlock Holmes, Miss Havisham from "Great Expectations," James Bond and Randle P. McMurphy from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" could co-exist in the same space.
"I expected what it is, but it's better," said Meg Madison of Los Angeles. "There's a little of everything. ... Not enough Westerns, I say."
Maybe there was a shortage of cowboys, but there was enough nostalgia for Highland Park's Hendrik Stooker.
"I think that young people will not appreciate (it) the way I do," said Stooker, 80. "I went through ... those movies, and it was very emotional at times. It's beautifully done."
Added Stooker's friend, "It's like a brain exercise, trying to figure out where everything's from."
At 1:48 p.m., in the film, children are eager for school to let out and someone's coming in late to work at a New York pizzeria. At 1:52 p.m., there are astronauts in space waiting to rendezvous with a ship.
I doze off around 2:40 p.m., but wake up at 3 p.m. to scenes from "Matchstick Men" and "Little Miss Sunshine," interspersed with clips of people indulging in afternoon naps. Watching actors curled up on a couch, yawning, makes me even sleepier.
At 5:30 p.m., I take a dinner break. After five hours of watching a movie, my jaw hurts and it seems my eyes are trailing. Are the lights really that bright in the museum's Plaza Cafe, where I'm scarfing down a grilled veggie sandwich? I've seen so many images from various locations and eras that it seems as if I haven't processed anything at all. But on I press, armed with a bar of chocolate for energy.
From 9 to 11 p.m., the 600-seat-capacity theater is nearly full. There's plenty of raucous laughter and audience members shouting out to favorites such as Joan Crawford and John Cusack.
But Zack Dresben, from Historic Filipinotown, finds the 40 minutes he saw "anxiety-inducing."
"It's like watching a clock," said Dresben, 27. "There's no narrative. The essence of the film is the temporal structure. In terms of an artwork, I didn't think it had much depth to it."
Earlier in the day, Amber Noland of Santa Monica said she felt as though "time was imploding." "I became uber conscious of seconds passing, and at the same time, the sense of waiting was almost unbearable," she said.
At 10 p.m., on the screen, dates are getting dropped off at home, people are drawing water for baths, and rain, thunder and lightning strike the landscape. Characters are pajama-clad, ready for bed.
But for Blake Nelson, who spent a few hours watching in the afternoon, the evening isn't over yet. He's ready to soak in more of the film.
"I didn't know if it would be compelling enough," said Nelson, of Venice, before heading in for a second round, "but I could watch it for hours."
Khoi Pham of Los Angeles leaves around this time after two hours in the theater.
"I wanted to see how (Marclay) incorporated movie scenes with the time and ... he did what I expected him to do," Pham said. "I imagine there's more horror stuff around midnight."
Pham is only half right. Midnight brings some frightened screams, and later on there are ominous strangers walking the streets, but no serial killers or ghosts.
"I thought there would be noir scenes, crime" in the late-night hours, said Mainak Dhar, 31, of Silver Lake, who watched "The Clock" in two-hour chunks - from 2 to 4 p.m., and then from 1 to 3 a.m. "There's more color in the day."
As 1:30 a.m. rolls around, the screen is alight mostly with restless, tired people waiting for sleep to come. In my theater seat, I feel the same: antsy, exhausted, and wishing I were in bed. At 2 a.m., there are still 50 or so cinema troopers sticking it out in the theater.
Come 3 a.m., the past two hours have consisted of people either having on-screen sex or groggily whining into a phone, "What are you doing? Don't you know what time it is?" At this point, "The Clock" shifts from a movie into a big-screen watch ticking off the seconds. The scenes are slow and the sound monotone, and there's an urge to ask the screen, "Don't you know it's 3 in the morning? I'm trying to get some shut-eye."
At 4 a.m., my audience mates are slumped over in their seats. They, like the people on screen, are in dreamland. My brain feels as if it has been scrambled in a pan, less from lack of sleep and more from watching thousands of rapidly changing scenes for nearly 24 hours. Eyelids heavy, I lose the battle to stay up.
But sleep is short. At 6 a.m., the movie characters and the 25 or so people left in the theater are awakened by rude, clanging alarm clocks and rooster crows.
I mimic the movie scenes as I trudge to the bathroom, brush my teeth, wash my face, and take a quick breakfast break of a stale scone and tea. I head back to the theater and watch characters whip the blankets off their spouses, drop their children off at school, punch in to work.
"I'm not sure if subconsciously there's something (the artist) might be telling us," Pham said Monday night. "I'm still trying to figure it out. But maybe there's nothing to figure out."
Message or not, "The Clock" is profound - and unsettling. And as I drive home, looking forward to a hot shower, I know with certainty that there's someone on-screen doing the exact same thing.
