During our discussion on Deleuze and his evocation of the time-image, a curious example came into my mind:  the 2004 thriller The Clearing starring Robert Redford and Helen Mirren and directed by Pieter Jan Brugge.  At first glance this film is the epitome of the movement-image Hollywood genre film.  However, there are very interesting things going on with time here that challenge that initial impression.  The film is loosely based on a true story and centers on the kidnapping of a wealthy businessman (Redford) by one of his former employees (Willem Dafoe).  The film documents both Redford’s abduction as well as the rescue effort headed by his wife (Mirren).  Very familiar territory here.  However, at the end of the film, there is a twist and devastating reveal – we discover that Redford’s character had been killed before Mirren even knew of his abduction.

I am sure there were many savvy movie watchers who spotted this right away as the shots involving Redford and Dafoe all take place in a single day while Mirren’s scenes spanned weeks.  However, for my affective experience (apologies to Eugenia Brinkema) this was not the case.  As a result, the ending caused a jolt or “shock” that sent me into a contemplative frame of mind.  Did I really not realize that these two experiences were occurring in varying temporalities?  Am I really that easily duped by clever film editing to alter my perception of time?  Are those scenes involving Redford and Dafoe reliable at all?  These types of shock endings also call up the virtual past/future because of the need to grapple with one’s own loss of the sense of “real” time and go back and recall moments in the film that may have offered clues to this revelation.  Also all ideas of logical causality associated with the movement-image are thrown out the window because anything that occurs between Dafoe and Redford that we thought were caused by circumstances in Mirren’s rescue efforts is proven false. The idea of moments in time comparing to pearls on a string is no longer truthfully representative. Therefore, within the confines of a very traditional Hollywood narrative with many of the tropes we see time and time again in suspense thrillers, this film still manages to veer at least slightly toward that vertical axis (especially in utilizing a flashback that never appears as such until the very end of the film).

Though certainly not the type of film Deleuze had in mind, I think it still offers an interesting variation of the traditional movement-image construct of mainstream Hollywood films.