Time Piece
The humor is also a lot more sexually forward than we expect from Jim Henson. Although today we might note the level of male gaze here, there’s one very funny moment in particular where a secretary walks by and the rat-a-tat rhythm changes to boing-boing-boing, to match her bouncing breasts. Later on, at a nightclub, Jim watches a seductive dancer and the film cuts to a shot of a very erect banana being unpeeled and then a champagne cork popping. But a moment later, he bounces away from those rather stereotypical phallic symbols and goes to a much weirder place. Suddenly, it isn’t a woman dancing but a raw chicken. Then, the film’s lead female actress appears as Whistler’s Mother, shocked by the display. And then it isn’t a chicken anymore but a human skeleton.
Jim flies.
And soon afterwards, the Whistler’s Mother painting theme sends us careening into an entirely different direction, with the woman painting Mona Lisa onto a canvas with one stroke, and elsewhere a man painting an actual elephant pink. Then Jim’s character shoots Mona Lisa in the eye, and suddenly he is thrown in jail and sentenced to hard labor, before escaping and again running off.
And as he runs, there are numerous changes of costume. Sometimes he’s in striped prison pajamas. Sometimes he’s running in an Abe Lincoln-ish suit, complete with top hat. And at one point, he’s a gorilla on a pogo stick, referencing both earlier on when he bounced on a pogo stick out of costume as well as a brief moment where he was Tarzan, swinging through the jungle. Then the film suddenly shifts to black-and-white footage of an old Western, and then Jim is finally pursued up to a high diving board. He jumps off…and begins to fly away! On mechanical wings that are being held up by wires that are deliberately very easy to see, enhancing the humor through meta.
And on and on it goes, with overlapping images and themes, some of which connect with and reference earlier ones, and others which just stand as weird non sequiturs. There’s a recurring image of Jim’s disembodied head appearing in odd places and yelping, “HELP!” Once, he appears on a dollar bill. Another time, his head is on a platter, as depicted in the picture at the top of the first page of this post, and almost at the very end, his head is inside a toilet bowl, which is flushed a moment later.
Speaking of the platter, that’s actually the culmination of a hilarious sequence leading into the nightclub in which the man and his wife eat a typical suburban dinner at a typical suburban table until click suddenly they’re in Tudor-style garb, devouring turkey legs and then click they’re cavemen and then click the wife is dressed like someone out of Jane Austen but click he’s sitting at a fancy dinner, shirtless, as in a nude-in-public dream, and then they’re at the nightclub, being served his own head. Again, “HELP!” Oh, and I forgot to mention that the dinner table is first set by a rewind speical effect allowing Jim to seemingly pull a tablecloth covered with plates full of food, candles, wine, etc., onto a table in one smooth motion.
And to complete the insanity, at the very start of the film, the man is a patient in a hospital, and in the very last shot, after all of this craziness, we discover that he has become the doctor. Wink! And it’s the magic of the film that one could probably launch into a lengthy analysis of its themes and symbols and deeper meanings or you can just sit in awe at its wonderful, zany weirdness and have just as meaningful an experience with it. Time Piece ended up attaining high praise from critics, winning prestigious awards at several European and American film festivals, and even being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Live Action.
Here are two short clips from Time Piece:
And a bit of documentary footage on its making:
And you can watch the entire film here!
We return on Monday with more short films and late night appearances!
Pages: 1 2