BAD TIMING
UK, 1980, 117 minutes, Colour.
Theresa Russell, Harvey Keitel, Art Garfunkel, Denholm Elliot, Daniel Massey.
Directed by Nicolas Roeg.
Bad Timing, though an offhand title, has much more significance in plot and themes. Nicolas Roeg makes few films. All use their environment: its reality, its visual impact as well as its meaning. Roeg is a former photographer, highly imaginative. Here the environment is modern Vienna, Freud's city, and an obsessive love story between two Americans, two frequently seen contemporary types: the surface? staid but passionate egotist male and the impulsive, vivacious, insecure woman. The flashback structure and fluid movement between present and past (doctors treat the girl after suicide attempt and detective (Harvey Keitel) reconstructs what happened) and the excellent performances of Art Garfunkel and especially Theresa Russell, make the characters and bad timing relationship quite vividly real.
1. The focus of the title, offhand, slang? The reference to time, alertness to interaction and appropriate timing? Bad Timing in the relationship? Bad times and a story of life, guilt? The end of a relationship? The working title of the film was Illusions.
2. The work of Nicolas Roeg: his few films, his preoccupation with environment, with colour. shapes. compositions on screen, details and symbols? Themes? Reality and a fractured vision of reality? Reality presented realistically, symbolically? The structure of the screenplay? moving obliquely through time? Playing with time and the audience understanding the relationship between past. present and future?
3. The dramatic impact of the structure: the opening at the art exhibition, Milena and her suicide and the ambulance? The story of Milena, the flashbacks? The sense of direction in understanding what had happened to Milena and why? Alex and his presence, the inspector? Whose memories were being presented? The focus on Milena’s memories and the continual return to the operating table? The fluidity of interplay between times? The trick editing with, for example. the inspector seeming to observe events in the past? The unanswered questions at the end of the film?
4. The importance of technique: Technovision, colour photography, the Austrian locations., the Czech border and the river, Vienna and the atmosphere of the city of Freud, modern Vienna? Apartments, the university. social settings, the streets? The importance of the various knickknacks in rooms? Milena’s brooches, cigarettes etc.? Milena's clothes, hairstyles and the colours and contrasts? The focus of the colour test and the significance of colours?
5. The contribution of the musical score, its wide range, the various moods, the choice of contemporary music, old classics, popular music? Audience response to the variety in the music? The artists chosen for songs? Billie Holliday and the final credits song of The Saw Old Story? The use of singer composer Art Garfunkel and the background of his music?
6. The importance of the choice of Vienna and its being the city of Freud? The film's focus on psychology, the specifics of the colour tests, the research into people's behaviour. Alex’s lecture and the slides? The tutorial? The importance of Freud's psychology and the focus on sexuality, illness, the mind, the unconscious? The passion of the Id, the conscience and superego and the clash between the two? Counselling and failing? The focus on sexuality. the voyeur. the observers? The characters as voyeurs, the audience as voyeur? Alex and his continually looking through windows., the inspector? Illness. therapy, erratic drives and compulsions? The interrelationship of doctor, patient, detective, psychologist, confessor? The discussions about spying? The intercomment in the presentation of the detective and the psychologist?
7. The background of art: the credits and the paintings and their style, significance? Reality and art, beauty and music? The erotic in art?
8. The focus on psychology and relationships - the individual stereotypes, love, sexuality, guilt, victimisation, ravishment? Responsibility? Victim and victimisers?
9. How well did the film introduce the audience to each character - as part of a puzzle, audience judgment on the attitudes of Alex and his accompanying Milena to the hospital, Milena and her suicide attempt? Victims and victimisers? The screenplay and the emphasis on jigsaw and pieces of puzzle? Memory and the importance of Milena's memory? The detective and his trying to know, see, understand? The change of audience attitude toward each of the characters? How much sympathy for Milena, the audience judgment on Alex, on the detective? How was this captured in the finale with the detective looking at himself in the mirror, New York and the encounter of Alex with Milena? The range of moods and responses throughout the running time?
10. The characterisation of Milena - the audience having to work at putting the jigsaw picture of Milena together? The initial focus on death, ugliness, the detail of the treatment in the hospital, the throat, blood and the cutting of the throat, vaginal swabs etc.? Milena and her hair, eyes, throat in the New York sequence? The change in the presentation of her relationship with Stefan? The encounter at the border and the wordless farewell, the flashback to her marriage encounter with Stefan? The emphasis on husband and wife, Stefan's devotion to her, her devotion to him, playing with him? Milena and her encounter with Alex at the party, her provocative stance with her leg and his having to go under her leg? Talking together, the coffee drink and her lies? Her love for Alex, erratic passion, the colour test? Their sexual encounters, talk? Her arriving late from Czechoslovakia and Alex's erratic outburst? The sequence at the mountain lookout and her deciding to walk how? Her apartment symbolising her, the mess? The focus on the various objects in the apartment and their being looked at by audience, Alex, the detective? Her photos? The university and her friends? Her exuberance, her passion, erratic nature, living in the present, subjective? The fights with Alex? Cleaning the apartment and the transition to his hostility, the sexual encounter on the staircase? Her discovery of the orange file? Her friendships in the city, the man on the bike, her drinking and throwing the bottles from the window? The taking of the pills? The range of her moods, the story of her family, her needs, impulses, feelings? Her love for Alex, for Stefan? Did she use him? Her being used? Cigarettes, brooches and their style, clothes, hair, colours?
11. The portrait of Alex, his explanation of his American background, the story of the pulling down of the New York apartment, his study, his lecture and the slides on sexuality and spying, his observing people, looking through windows, tutorials? The importance of Freud and Alex's illustrating Freud's theories? Obsessive, perfectionist? The party, the encounter with Milena and his going under her leg, the encounter for coffee, love, jealousy, the humiliation of Milena at the Czech border, the sexual experiences and passion, especially the staircase sequence? Alex and his gathering evidence against Milena, the C.I.A.-type file and investigation, the people in the photo and his pocketing the photos, the building up of suspicion? The visit to the Czech embassy? The psychologist not knowing himself? His breaking with Milena, humiliating her, her throwing the bottles at him? The phone call to Stefan? Milena's ringing him and his having the girl in the apartment? His hesitation about her suicide attempt, replaying the tape, delaying in going to her, the build-up to the ravishment and the indication of reasons for it? His nerviness, clothes, cigarettes?
12. Alex and his lies and audience alienation of sympathy? The encounter with the policeman typing. the answering of questions, the detective? The detective and the continued pursuit, Alex's memories, his being invited to confess and free himself? His self sufficiency? The end and his being carried away from Milena? How much like the detective was he? A moraliser, didactic, an intellectual unaware of the sensual?
13. The importance of the interlude in North Africa, the holiday with Milena, the possibilities of marriage, the Arab truck and its comedy, the scene on the rooftop and his proposal? Milena's inability to respond to him? The symbol of the sand?
14. The portrait of the detective, in himself, at home, his attitude towards the law, his obsession with psychology, the mind, his insights and wanting to understand, his skill as a detective and reconstructing what happened, his consulting the people to find out the truth, his mode of interrogation, persuasion, the editing of the film making him seem a voyeur, imagining what happened, his interaction with Alex, the strong build up to the invitation to confession the detective becoming counsellor doctor with patient? Its being frustrated and his return home?
15. Stefan as tender, farewell at the border, the sexual encounters, his irritation with Alex on the phone, his presence with another woman, his presence at the end? The background of Stefan being a spy with reference to the discussions about espionage?
16. The film's presentation of the police and the various personalities, the people associated with psychology and the university, the foppish man in the restaurant giving information to Alex, the students, the personnel of the Czech embassy, Ulla and her erotic performance on the net of the nightclub, Milena's neighbours, the personnel at the hospital, the C.I.A. personnel? The blending of reality and unreality?
17. The importance of the cumulative effect of the various incidents, the mods, the city, the people?
18. The focus on the erotic and its visual presentation, the communication of love, passion, lust? Voyeurism? People being used? The significance of the ravishment, the tones of necrophilia? Love, rejection, violence, victimisation? The significance of male-female relationships healthy, unhealthy? The background of violence ? especially in death, the violence even for healing?
19. The focus on truth, guilt, obsessions, confession and healing?
20. The comment on perfection and what might or might not have been? The hypothesis of what might have happened had Alex not met Milena? Good faith, bad faith, the unconscious and its drives? The bad timing of people meeting and encountering one another?
