"A Sick Film About Sick People Made By Sick People For Sick People."—The Rank Organization, Original distributor of BAD TIMING who funded the film, reacted with shock when they saw the end result.This famously conservative distribution company empire with a long history of releasing family classics removed their logo from the beginning of the film and banned the film from their own cinema chain network.
Plot Overview :
A young american woman, Milena , is rushed to hospital, in Vienna, after taking a drug overdose. Her former lover, psychiatry professor Alex Linden , accompanies her to hospital. As the doctors try to save Milena’s life, a police Inspector questions Alex , trying to get to the reasons for her suicide attempt.As the Inspector pores over the details of the case, Alex recounts the minutes of their fragmented relationship, and the audience tries to put together not only the events leading up to Milena's suicide attempt, but the strange and often painful journey from their first acquaintance to this potentially fatal end.Also the inspector finds evidence suggesting that hours passed between the time that Alex Linden received Milena's distress call, and when he finally summoned an ambulance. What is the uncooperative Linden hiding?
Review :
Bad Timing is a clear example of a film way ahead of its time because of its non-linear structure.In these post–Pulp Fiction days, or maybe just because 21st-century audiences know how to quickly orient themselves, Bad Timing's jarring structure isn't so jarring. Like Babel,Pulp Fiction.... Bad Timing jumps back and forth in time to create new layers of meaning.But unlike those films, Bad Timing's temporal shifts don't feel like organic parts of the story, but like attacks on our sense of place and time.Director Nicholas Roeg doesn't use flashbacks in the normal sense, but adapts film grammar to express a flowing state of consciousness.The film starts in the middle, jumps ahead to the end, then back to the prologue within the first four minutes – and continues in a non-linear fashion until the final shot. It takes us viewers a while to get our bearing, but it also elicits our attention to detail. Never are we certain if the cascading flashbacks are meant to be objective on the filmmaker's part, or the perspective of one of the three main characters. Is Milena a victim, or a tramp? Is Alex, a creep, or is that just the inspector's projection? Is the inspector a sympathetic doppelganger, or a crafty manipulator?
The essence of the characters' relationship is defined in a stray comment made by Milena halfway through the film: "I wish you could understand me less and love me more." Bad Timing is a film that thrives on the unknown quantities that erupt between breakups and reconciliations, so 'understanding' these characters, their motivations and their interactions is a difficult task; but at the same time we cannot help but appreciate the relative positions of this eccentric woman and the relentless intellectual who tries to engage her.Director Roeg also elects to change subjective viewpoints when he shows Milena's back story with her sad Czechoslovakian husband Stefan . Lest we think her a helpless victim in this psycho sexual drama, we see Milena toying with Stefan's affections. She pretends to be concerned, when she's actually amused by her ability to walk away from a man so hopelessly in love with her. Milena cherishes her sexual freedom, whereas Alex is rooted in the need to possess her, to make her exclusively his. Alex doesn't realize that he already 'has' Milena as much as she can be 'had', and it's his damning flaw that he wants excusive rights. The conventional Alex is obsessed with
Milena and can't stand the thought of her being with someone else, an attitude that naturally drives her into the arms of others. She's ready to see their relationship go on forever, just as it is. But he wants to hurry to a position of control - a bill of sale in the form of marriage. Milena accuses Alex of being greedy in love, of demanding too much. Her continual question is, "What do you want?"The missing two hours that put Milena's life in danger reveal the malignancy of this modern pairing. Bristling at what he thinks is Milena's manipulation, Alex dawdles before bothering to answer her call for help fter a drug overdose. Finding her unconcious and helpless, he seizes the opportunity to take from her what he thinks he deserves .The gruesome scene that follows is about as explicit and disturbing as mainstream movies can get.
Director Nicolas Roeg is a bold, detailed, and visually emotive director. He has directed a large handful of excellent-to-great films, and many people count Bad Timing among them. He replaces traditional narrative storytelling with stunning photography, explicit carnality and a signature editing style of jump cuts, cross cuts and subliminal flicker cuts. The film's look was based on the art of Gustav Klimt.It is unfortunate that this brilliant movie is not more well known than his other films.Maybe Roeg was right when he said "people don't like it when you hold a mirror to their face".Theresa Russell as Milena is a dynamo. Her character's cold-faucet, hot-faucet mind games and desperate attempts to appear carefree spin a deep emotional web.One can picture a thousand actresses terrified by her ability to be truly uninhibited. Art Garfunkel was cast for his intellectual, snobbish physicality. Art alternates between primly pursed lips and angrily flashing
eyes, and his impassivity doesn't do much to sell his emotional range as an actor. He nonetheless manages to convey a strictly constrained intellectual with depraved, suppressed passions.Harvey Keitel as the inspector shows us glimpses of the hardboiled naïveté he would perfect in Reservoir Dogs. He underplays the role so thoroughly, we accept him without question.Denholm Elliott as Stefan is quiet and powerful in his scant scenes.Conclusion :
Bad Timing is honest, gritty, and dense, with intense visual imagery.It goes beyond normal definitions of what is controversial. If you can get past the unwholesome core and irritating trappings, Bad Timing offers a truly challenging artistic experience. There is simply no other film like it, and, based on current popular trends, nor will there ever be.
Title :Bad Timing (1980)
Dir: Nicolas Roeg
Cast: Theresa Russell, Art Garfunkel,Harvey Keitel
Country :UK
Language :English
Rated R for strong sexuality
DVD Extras :Interview with Director ,cast.
Deleted Scenes
Behind the scenes
Trailers
Trailer link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sKGx92ST4g
Torrent file name : Bad Timing (1980) DVDRip (SiRiUs sHaRe)
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