Mike Figgis's Time Code: A Quad-Screen Digital Film Experiment

Mike Figgis's 2000 film "Time Code" was shot on Sony Dvcam DSR-130s and originally conceived for the web before theatrical release. The film presents four simultaneous 93-minute continuous takes across four screens (labeled A, B, C, D), with no cuts and no script—only a diagram coordinating movement. Twenty-seven actors improvised within a classical unity of time and place, set on November 19, 1999, starting at 3 p.m. The story unfolds at Red Mullet Productions on Sunset Boulevard, Figgis's own production company, where a producer (Stellan Skarsgård) loses control of his career. Key characters include Emma (Saffron Burrows), Lauren (Jane Triplehorn), Rose (Salma Hayek), and Alex (Stellan Skarsgård). The film incorporates three earthquakes that mark shifts in narrative phases and metaphorically reference DV culture's shaky camera aesthetics. A DJ and filmmaker Ana Paul (Mia Maestro) arrives mid-film, delivering a theoretical pitch invoking Bauhaus, Vertov, Eisenstein, Borges, and Leibniz's monad, describing the film as a combinatorial box generating sixteen permutations from four propositions. The film ends with Lauren killing Alex. Figgis, also a musician, wrote the script on music paper and conceived the film as a symphony, using Mahler's Fifth Symphony. The work is framed as an exploration of digital cinema, probability, and viewer choice, with sound cues directing attention. The article by Louis-José Lestocart appears in art press.