The Clock, Christian Marclay

Since I first read about The Clock in 2010 I have wanted to see it.  The concept of it was so intriguing and it seemed almost impossible to pull off: a 24 hour movie in which each minute is either shown or mentioned via thousands of film clips, montaged together. It's in real time: the movie begins at 11:00 am and when it is shown it always starts at 11:00 am. It ends at 10:59 am the next day and it plays for the entire 24 hours, real time.  You can see some of it or all of it.  I have been following its journey around the US and it finally came to SF.  SF Museum of Modern Art is currently showing it until the end of the month.  http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1333

Gabe and I were planning on seeing it last evening, Saturday night, but the wait, which you can follow on the SFMOMA website, grew longer and longer as the night grew later and later.  We decided against waiting for over two hours, but I was determined to get my Clock fix.  I slept at Gabe's last night, got up this morning at 5:50, jumped into my clothes, brushed my teeth and was at the museum door at 6:14 am with really bad bed hair.  SF streets were empty, I was able to park across the street from the museum, walked into what looked like a closed building, got a ticket and made my way to the movie hall.  They have 27 low couches, each can seat three people.  When I entered there were perhaps 50 people watching the film.  For the first 90 minutes, no one left, a couple of people came in.  By 8:00 the theater was full (81 people is max) and when I left at 8:35 there were already a handful of folks waiting.

It's difficult to explain how mesmerizing The Clock is.  Each minute is either shown or mentioned in dialogue, often many times.  For example, 7:00 am is shown probably a dozen times, as alarm clocks ring and people reach to turn them off.  Since I was watching it in the morning, the scenes I saw were morning scenes:  people getting up, getting dressed, cooking breakfast, shaving, stretching, yawning......  doing what everyone does at 7:00 am.  And it was actually 7:00 am!  

How Marclay managed to watch so many films and capture over 1440 individual designations of time is simply an astounding feat.  And it's fun!  It isn't boring, it moves along, you get to see clips from tons of movies, and he often makes the scenes bleed into each other in novel ways.  I could go on and on but suffice it to say that I really want to go back and see more of it.  If you get the chance, check it out.  Go early in the day..... right now, at 4:00 on Sunday afternoon, there is more than an hour wait.  Still, it's worth that hour..... it is nothing short of originally amazing.