Christopher SoallTime Lock
December 16th 2008 15:36
Inspired by last nights post I checked the ABC for an old film tonight. There was one starting called Time Lock. It was quite an interesting buildup of suspense and release of it.It felt a bit like a theatre performance with a cast of characters.
The plot was quite skeletal. A little boy arrives with his mother to meet his father after work at the bank. It is his sixth birthday and he received a flashlight as a present which he proudly displays for his father and his father's boss to see. His father just has to lock up the safe with his boss. There are two combinations and a time lock which is fixed until Monday Morning.
Of course with this information my mind had already jumped ahead. Kid, flashlight, Time lock. Of course they are going to lose track of where the kid is rushing around to exploring. Of course they are going to get distracted and of course they are going to lock him in. So this is the problem of focus. How to get him out before he suffocates. They do a good job of building suspense through intellectual discourse about how much oxygen is left in the room and how long he will last. And they have a good initial scene filled with deceptive hope he'll get out right away as his father manages to communicate to him through the heavy door and direct him to pile up books and try and reach the time lock. The moment when he's fingers are just fumbling with the timelock and the books collapse does grab you in even though you are expecting it the gasp and teeth grinding is an automatic reaction. I had to watch to see if he got out then whether I liked it or not. After this point however it gets tedious. But this is a good thing in terms of conveying to the audience that awful powerless feeling. The stillness while time ticks away. The men talk and plan and talk and plan. Others drill and burn at the door in a futile attempt to get through despite much dialogue establishing its construction of reinforced steel and other metals. The parents are paralysed and left to fret in a corner. The mother of course becomes hysterical and has to be given a sedative at some point. The father and his boss are haggard with their guilt for shutting the door having no idea the child was in at the time.
The film very clearly casts the women in a useless role. Good for making cups of tea and phoning, looking distraught and being comforted. The men plan and get stuck into action. Although there is an overriding sense that both the active and the passive displays are equalised by the seeming impossiblity of the task.
Finally the engineer is carted there by aide of the radio station alerting him and bringing him in by helicopter. Thousands more people are brought in at this point mentioned by the radio broadcaster as having rung in to register their support or gathered outside the bank. Pretty well everyone is powerless, still in hope.
The engineer makes action happen and all the hopes rest on his shoulders to save the day. His plan works. At this point I found it most interesting. Like most old films there is scant soundtrack. Silence is really utilised at the crucial moments to hang the viewer in the suspense and powerlessness of the characters onscreen.
The child is carried out in silence when the vault is finally opened. For some reason they carry him into the ambulance before they even check he is breathing. No CPR is performed. Something is done with an oxygen tank and adrenaline injection. Everyone watches and waits until finally after a long and painful drawn out silence a heart beat is registered.
As the heart beat grows stronger everything is established as ok. You can feel everyone breath again as the noise picks up a bit of background music sparks up. The cast disperses and we are left with the reassuring dialogue to the mother before they drive away in the ambulance ringing in our ears predicting that he will be right as rain tomorrow.
I couldn't help but question this optimistic diagnosis as I regarded this ending through my modern world view and a fair slice of cynisism. What about brain damage from oxygen deprivation or if he is physically ok the years of therapy he'll probably go through for the psychological trauma of being locked up in the dark.
It was a tedious film but it grabbed attention through establishing sympathy for the child in the opening moments. You had to wait to see his was ok, just like all the characters with baited breath.
Certainty that he would be as dictated by the laws that supposedly govern films like this was threatened and wavered at especially the final points. I wondered if they would leave me with that miserable and empty feeling of all the fuss being for nothing and him being dead anyway.
It is interesting how it deals with time. So important all the way through at times racing, at times standing still. Once he is established to be ok time seems represented to have started going on again as normal by the cast dispersing away. The time lock has been released, And the audience is finally released as well thank goodness as the heater had gone off downstairs and I was intending to go to bed at some point. Yet I have slipped from the suspension of watching it to writing about it so perhaps it won't be any time soon.
The plot was quite skeletal. A little boy arrives with his mother to meet his father after work at the bank. It is his sixth birthday and he received a flashlight as a present which he proudly displays for his father and his father's boss to see. His father just has to lock up the safe with his boss. There are two combinations and a time lock which is fixed until Monday Morning.
Of course with this information my mind had already jumped ahead. Kid, flashlight, Time lock. Of course they are going to lose track of where the kid is rushing around to exploring. Of course they are going to get distracted and of course they are going to lock him in. So this is the problem of focus. How to get him out before he suffocates. They do a good job of building suspense through intellectual discourse about how much oxygen is left in the room and how long he will last. And they have a good initial scene filled with deceptive hope he'll get out right away as his father manages to communicate to him through the heavy door and direct him to pile up books and try and reach the time lock. The moment when he's fingers are just fumbling with the timelock and the books collapse does grab you in even though you are expecting it the gasp and teeth grinding is an automatic reaction. I had to watch to see if he got out then whether I liked it or not. After this point however it gets tedious. But this is a good thing in terms of conveying to the audience that awful powerless feeling. The stillness while time ticks away. The men talk and plan and talk and plan. Others drill and burn at the door in a futile attempt to get through despite much dialogue establishing its construction of reinforced steel and other metals. The parents are paralysed and left to fret in a corner. The mother of course becomes hysterical and has to be given a sedative at some point. The father and his boss are haggard with their guilt for shutting the door having no idea the child was in at the time.
The film very clearly casts the women in a useless role. Good for making cups of tea and phoning, looking distraught and being comforted. The men plan and get stuck into action. Although there is an overriding sense that both the active and the passive displays are equalised by the seeming impossiblity of the task.
Finally the engineer is carted there by aide of the radio station alerting him and bringing him in by helicopter. Thousands more people are brought in at this point mentioned by the radio broadcaster as having rung in to register their support or gathered outside the bank. Pretty well everyone is powerless, still in hope.
The engineer makes action happen and all the hopes rest on his shoulders to save the day. His plan works. At this point I found it most interesting. Like most old films there is scant soundtrack. Silence is really utilised at the crucial moments to hang the viewer in the suspense and powerlessness of the characters onscreen.
The child is carried out in silence when the vault is finally opened. For some reason they carry him into the ambulance before they even check he is breathing. No CPR is performed. Something is done with an oxygen tank and adrenaline injection. Everyone watches and waits until finally after a long and painful drawn out silence a heart beat is registered.
As the heart beat grows stronger everything is established as ok. You can feel everyone breath again as the noise picks up a bit of background music sparks up. The cast disperses and we are left with the reassuring dialogue to the mother before they drive away in the ambulance ringing in our ears predicting that he will be right as rain tomorrow.
I couldn't help but question this optimistic diagnosis as I regarded this ending through my modern world view and a fair slice of cynisism. What about brain damage from oxygen deprivation or if he is physically ok the years of therapy he'll probably go through for the psychological trauma of being locked up in the dark.
It was a tedious film but it grabbed attention through establishing sympathy for the child in the opening moments. You had to wait to see his was ok, just like all the characters with baited breath.
Certainty that he would be as dictated by the laws that supposedly govern films like this was threatened and wavered at especially the final points. I wondered if they would leave me with that miserable and empty feeling of all the fuss being for nothing and him being dead anyway.
It is interesting how it deals with time. So important all the way through at times racing, at times standing still. Once he is established to be ok time seems represented to have started going on again as normal by the cast dispersing away. The time lock has been released, And the audience is finally released as well thank goodness as the heater had gone off downstairs and I was intending to go to bed at some point. Yet I have slipped from the suspension of watching it to writing about it so perhaps it won't be any time soon.
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