The Clock (Christian Marclay, 2010)

10/10
6:00pm-11:00pm
I have been chomping at the bit to see Christian Marclay's The Clock since I first read about it after it won the Silver Lion at Vienna way back in 2011. It finally made its way to Montreal's Musee d'Arts Contemporain for a couple of months and I caught 5 hours of it last night.
If you haven't heard about it, The Clock is a 24-hour long video compilation culled from clips referencing time from thousands of movies, and playing out in real time. So, for example, when it's 7:23pm in real life, The Clock is showing a clip from a movie when it's 7:23pm (or thereabouts). But it's much more than just a collection of clips of clocks smashed together. The clips are edited together in incredibly cleverly ways, often including overlapping or mixed sound, that makes the whole thing feel like a giant, neverending film experience taking placeover the course of a day. Marclay also manipulates the scenes in clever ways - a character in a French movie from the 50's picks a phone and dials a number at 8:11pm, and the call is answered by Fox Mulder at 8:11pm in the 2000's, and so on.
And the longer you watch it, the more references you catch. For example, at 6:30pm, a character might make reference to having to eat dinner in a half hour. At 7:00pm, if you pay attention, you'll likely see a clip from that same movie of the character doing just that. It's this kind of hunting (as well as the fun in recognizing clips and figuring out what movie they're from) that makes it so easy to keep watching. Despite being constantly aware of the passing time, the 5 hours I spent genuinely blew by, until the last half hour when my stomach kept reminding me I hadn't had dinner yet.
Another fascinating thing is to see what common actions happen at a given time across a multitude of movies. When I came in at 6pm, there were a lot of scenes with people coming home from work, or commuting, or sitting down to dinner. At 7-8pm, a lot of scenes of people getting ready to go out or children being put to bed. At 8pm there were a surprising amount of scenes at the theatre. From 9-11pm, lots of stuff taking place in bed (rarely sexual, however), lots of plots being hatched behind closed doors under cover of night. The shift in tone, from the lightness of the evening to the darker themes that permeate the film events that occur at night, is also very noticeable. Another thing The Clock maybe points out unintentionally is just how many plot points in movies revolve around characters being late for something.
I'm planning to head back to The Clock next Saturday to catch it during the day. I would really like to see what clips Marclay came up with for the obscure 2am-5am times, and even though the museum does give it a few full 24-hour showings, I doubt I'll be able to make it to those. Hopefully one day we'll be able to access it on the internet at our leisure, kind of like the 24-hour music video for Pharrell Williams' "Happy".
All that to say, if you have a chance to see The Clock somewhere near you, don't miss the opportunity. It is a completely unique, fascinating and overwhelming experience. Here is a bootleg clip someone made from 10:15pm to 10:35pm if you're interested in a sampling.

10:00am-4:00pm
I went back on Saturday and watched from 10:00am to 4:00pm and enjoyed myself again immensely. The major difference is the wide variety of things that take place during the day, I found it considerably more wide open than the earlier night scenes that I had seen. Lots more outdoors stuff, obviously. And a surprising (but I guess it shouldn't be) amount of train scenes. As expected, lots of classroom and office scenes too.
One thing I enjoyed watching was the progression of characters waking up. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the brunt of them, which I imagine take place between 6am and 8am, but it was still fun to see. Almost everybody waking up after 10am in a movie is either lazy or late (like real life, more or less). Marlon Brando had a good one at 11:30am from a film I didn't recognize where, upon being handed the newspaper, remarks with some bemusement that other people must be awake as well. The latest I remember before I left was Jeff Daniels at 3:30pm.
I'm more curious than ever about the 1am - 5am ish timeslots, so I really hope this gets streamed over the internet or something one day. Or that it comes through Montreal again and I can commit to staying overnight to watch it.