Kidnapped time

It’s a conspiracy, that’s what it is. A conspiracy of the Men in Grey, those time thieves who lusted after Momo’s freedom. And if it’s not like that, I am open to hear alternative theories.

This is the thing: you can know a lot about a movie by reading its title. But before you go and tell me that that is the most preposterously obvious thing you’ve heard all month, please take a few moments to remember there’s plenty of movies with titles such as “Un Chien Andalou”, or “An Andalusian Dog”, which tell us nothing. Or rather, they tell us something which is completely unrelated to the film, which in this case does not talk about dogs or Andalusians. The more hipster-ish among you will retort that that is not a particularly good example, since it is a surrealist movie smoked up by Buñuel and Dalí and that it is made specifically to elicit non-linear, meta-textual something-or-other. But, you know, quit that. What I am talking about is plenty common.

If you just read the movie’s title “Let the Right One In”, you do not immediately picture vampires (er- Spoilers!); but you might actually think of vampires by seeing the title “There Will Be Blood”, even if it’s about two fellows fighting over oil. And milkshakes. I’m not completely sure, I was a tad sleepy when I watched that one.

But here I will refer specifically to a very particular kind of movie: that which includes a time measure in its title. There is something quite fascinating and disturbing in it, and we shall proceed to investigate them methodically, as one does:

“The Hour …”

Ohh you see this in a title, and you know you are in for some dramatic or horrific action. There will be blood –for real– or there will be some sort of confrontation and/or high stakes. Or at the very least, a mental breakdown. You can see why: because “The Hour of…” implies that something will happen at a specific time, there is urgency about it. And it probably will not be pretty.

Take Hour of the Gun (1967). That is a perfect example right there, with gunslingers in the Old West. Tombstone. The O.K. Corral. Doc Holiday coughing up a storm. A showdown at the accorded hour. You can’t not see that coming just from the title. Then you have Hour of the Wolf (1968), a surrealist thing with Max von Sydow thrown in for good measure, which always adds to a general sense of doom. Even if you don’t know what the wolf will do at some hour or other, or if there is a wolf there at all, you know something will not end well for someone. And indeed, the man suffers a mental breakdown while remembering some awful memories, because a movie title like that can only be about gloom. Another interesting example is Salem’s Lot, the 1979 Stephen King novel about vampires. When they were translating the title into Spanish, they saw that doing a literal translation would make it sound more like a car dealership than a haunted town, so they judiciously opted for “Hour of the Vampire”.

“The Day…”

Now when you see a movie title starting like this, it will give you a similar feeling as the ‘Hour’ one, but with one difference: you know that what’s coming is going to be a much bigger catastrophe. Let’s see some classics.
Day of the Triffids (1963) shows a terrible invasion that might very well wipe out humanity. Well, that is, if humanity hadn’t mastered such abilities as ‘running’, ‘gardening’, or ‘throwing heavy and/or poisonous stuff with a reasonable amount of accuracy’. The thing is, the monsters are giant, walking flowers. They don’t even walk that fast, either. But, you see, you go to the movies to be entertained, and you might as well suspend your disbelief when they are telling you about some deadly itinerant vegetation. Another example is Day of the Jackal (1973), where there is a countdown to an assassination attempt on the President of France. It might be less exciting than the triffids, but the idea is also that of a grand disaster.

Now moving on to even more dramatic consequences, we have The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), where we see the ‘Day’ word used to its full potential, because this time all of humanity is going to be wiped out by people who can actually do it, namely aliens with high technology. Same goes for Day of the Dead (1985), a classic Romero zombie movie where the menace is not only potential: they have already nearly wiped us out. But it’s not only at daytime that these disgraces can happen…

“The Night …”

Also at night, of course! The point being, you know that a 12-hour period is more than enough to unleash apocalyptic grief on whoever happens to be standing around. There are actually two kinds of terrible things that can go wrong in a ‘Night’ movie:

First, you have your trusty psychopaths and killers. In Night of the Hunter (1955), for example, Robert Mitchum is a maniacal con who tries to swindle a widow out of her money before murdering her. In The Night of the Generals (1967) we have a sadistic and gruesome murder, a Hitler-assassination conspiracy, and Donald Pleasance, who is always magnificent at being creepy and disturbing, even in full cat-stroking, Bond-villain mode.

And of course, monstrous invasions are more often than not scheduled at night for maximum effect. The elder, the dean of them all we might say, is Night of the Living Dead (1968): the original Romero classic. We understand that zombies are undiscriminating regarding the appropriate time of day for their brain-tasting activities, so there you go. And we can mention Night of the Lepus (1972), a movie that depicts the terrible, horrifying invasion of a small town by, uh, well… OK they are bunnies. Giant, angry bunnies that kill people. See “suspension of disbelief” and “be entertained”, above.

Some of you may also point out to The Night of the Iguana (1964), a film which starts with ‘Night’ but which sports neither bloodshed nor monsters in it. To which I would reply: well, it is still a disturbing movie –what with all the borderline pedophilia– and it does include at least one mental breakdown. Also, I would point out that I said ‘methodically’, not ‘exhaustively’. Next one.

“The Year…”

All right. When we arrive to such an extended period of time, it is not disasters anymore. A disaster –or an invasion with the purpose of global annihilation– cannot drag for so long without losing some of its drama. Those things need to be quick. So when we see the ‘Year’ title opening, we know that, sure, there will be drama, but not urgency. Or genocide.

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), for example, follows Mad Max and Lt. Ripley as they meet, fall in love and are generally threatened by vague dangers around them in Indonesia, as white characters in exotic locales are wont to do. Or take Year of the Fish (2007), a story of a modern-day Cinderella with a magic fish instead of talking mice. We can appreciate the fact that, as the time period mentioned in the title extends, we move away from bullets and showdowns and extinction-level events, on to decidedly more Hallmark-y material.

So. Here is my doubt. The one I expressed at the opening lines of this digression: Who has stolen the Weeks and the Months from us? And since we’re at it, who stole the cheese from some random fellows living in a mice-infested dystopian labyrinth? Get out of that maze, you fools, instead of looking for more cheese! You have been brainwashed! Big Brother just wants you to think you are clever, all the while forcing you to adapt unquestioningly to his every whim!!!

Ahem.

I lost my pacing there for a minute. But seriously, the questions I pose have no satisfactory answer. Let’s forget about the purloined dairy. Why are there no movies whose titles begin with “The Week That…”, or “The Month of…”? What are they hiding from us? Is there a war on Weeks and Months? Is that subliminal programming so that we can only focus on either the urgent or the trivial, that we may not properly visualize those precious short-term periods where we realize the small but significant changes in our lives?

Are the Men in Grey pulling the strings in Hollywood???

But, you will say –because you are now one of them–, there are movies that do include the names of months, like Come September, or Seven Days in May, or more nonsensically, Red October (Seriously, what are you talking about? Please re-read all the article if you came up with Red October). What I say is sure, there are those. But they have neither the constancy nor the status of the Hours, the Days and Nights, the Years. And Weeks? No one talks about them. They are the chrono-pariahs of film titles. The odd time you see them is to show obsessions and degradation and –lo and behold! Even when they come into view, they shall not allude to their rightfully defined period, but to express others, such as in 9 1/2 Weeks, or in 28 Weeks After.

Weekends… yes, they have it easy. They are festive. They are wacky. Adorable. But Weeks? No one wants them, they are slowly being forgotten. Where are they? None can tell. Not even Google. They have been kidnapped. Silenced. No one will mention a seven-day period of time. Did the ancient Greek and Norse gods contribute their noble names in vain?

We want –nay, we demand– an explanation. This is outrageous.

Hollywood: if you are reading this, and I know you are, here in my hands is a script. It is proudly, defiantly, named “The Week When Everyone In The World Just Kind Of Forgot His Name”. Come and get it. I dare you.