The End of Time

Funny how it's about time; all it did was waste mine. There is no plot or purpose: you are left wondering what in good heck you just watched. You know those people who throw a paint covered paint brush at a blank canvas and what ever random splatter it creates becomes a million dollar painting? Those people like this movie. Please, I urge you, do not waste your time. Not much to comment on since literally nothing happens.

The viewer is subjected to many exasperatingly long spans of unnarrated contemplation. It would help if the visual content had a direct bearing on the subject at hand or if it was shortened to 30 seconds or so. As for the interviews, the documentary seems to be throwing up various unrelated topics hoping one will stick and inspire you. At first, there are fascinating discussion with CERN scientists. That got my attention ( 3 stars for that). But you are then left hanging. Things devolve to interviews with people who don't seem to be using the few brain cells they have left. The perspective from eastern and aboriginal spirituality is brought out in the same drawn-out inept fashion. The ten-minute unnarrated psychedelic ending is laughable but a heartfelt opinion of an elderly woman closed this fiasco.

You have to be on serious drugs to bear to sit through the whole movie. They probably needed some to make such rubbish and then think highly of it.

A waste of my time.

The interviews are ok, but there is just too much time wasted in nonsense videos of snow or close-ups of cables.

I couldn't make it past the first 20 minutes.

Beautiful, mesmerizing meditation piece. Very gutsy to do as there is no story, not a series of interviews with experts: it's an experience and the theme of time is almost incidental.

The photography, music and image editing are all stunning. But none of them are "artsy" to call attention to themselves. They all contribute to this meditative experience. I love the fact that the venues range from LHC/CERN to Detroit to life at the edge of a volcano and it's ceaseless lava flow.

If you must have plot, tension and resolution to enjoy a movie, this is not for you. If you are ready to sit back and enjoy a beautiful experience, this will blow you away.

A MEDITATION ON TIME Swiss-Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler takes his sweet time making films. In the years since the transcendental epic Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002), Mettler again has traveled the world amassing mind-blowing images and sensations, and returns to Locarno with a meditation on a subject we experience daily but rarely take the time to ponder: time itself. His leapfrogging across space takes him from the now-famous particle accelerator in CERN to the ruins of Detroit to the lava flow of Big Island of Hawaii and to a Hindu death rite in India. Within each sub-adventure, experts and regular people provide their opinions on the meaning and uses of time, often in voice-over. Mettler proceeds instinctively; each unpredictable edit builds up an opus linked by the ephemeral presence of billowing clouds. And there is clearly a presence behind these images. Mettler's highly personal approach to a vast subject that is essentially unfilmable is not philosophical, rather perceptual (and ultimately environmental). Seemingly random - as random, say, as the weather - Mettler's trippy films work as perceptual experiences, and The End of Time makes viewers conscious of cinematic time, and of their own sense of time as they are watching the film. What does it mean to be a viewer, sitting in a theatre watching a film about a film about time? Like the scientists in CERN, Mettler is exploring for the sake of knowing -- free your mind, and the rest will follow. (Mark Peranson, Pardo Live Locarno)