The Brooklyn Rail

Somewhere above the shores of Lac de Neuchâtel, high in the Jura Mountains, a team of master watchmakers are perched at their benches, fabricating, finishing, and assembling watch components, some no larger than a fraction of a millimeter. The rarest and most intricate of these engineering feats, often referred to as “Grand Complications,” can contain upwards of one thousand components and have been known to take years to complete. 

In a mechanical watch, the power from the mainspring releases stored energy that is transferred step by step through a series of rotating wheels called the “gear train.” It ultimately reaches the escapement mechanism that controls the rhythmic movement of the balance wheel; together they drive the watch hands and other time keeping functions. The enemies of accuracy are friction and gravity. Microscopic drops of natural and synthetic oils lubricate the meshing gears, easing resistance and keeping all the parts running smoothly. If the average human heart beats approximately 100,000 times every twenty-four hours, consider the typical mechanical watch movement. Its heart beats 18,000 times an hour or 432,000 times a day. That represents 216,000 “ticks” and 216,000 “tocks” daily.

For an horologist like myself, the simile is obvious: Christian Marclay’s The Clock is nothing less than a “Grand Complication,” equal in precision, artisanal skill, and chronographic poetry. Its production and assembly involved a dedicated team of researchers, slicers, sound designers, and coders. Much in the same way that a master watchmaker obsessively contrives a world of millimeters, tenths of millimetres, and microns to achieve a remarkable horological complexity, Marclay has painstakingly set more than ten thousand clips of moving images, each of varying duration, into interlocking, sequenced motion. Sound provides the lubricant, greasing over the transitions or “hinges” between abrupt cuts; overlaid soundtracks and changes in pitch and volume prevent the cinematic collage from getting all gummed up.

Like a bespoke timepiece, The Clock keeps exact time of the 1,440 minutes in a twenty-four-hour day, its thousands of ticks and tocks also resounding in the human hearts whose lives and loves we see pulsing across the screen. In the final scene of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959), the director’s young alter ego, Antoine Doinel, runs toward the ocean, which he has always longed to see at low tide, in an homage to the gravitational force that the moon has on the ocean, time, and life. For those of us who are no longer in sync with the lunar calendar, the most coveted Grand Complications include dials that register the phases of the moon and the tide.

No wonder the Swiss watchmaking brand Richard Mille chose to jump start its partnership with MoMA by sponsoring this current run of The Clock on 53rd Street. Timepiece product placements, both intentional and circumstantial, date back to the early days of motion pictures, and watch spotting in films has become somewhat of a sport for many enthusiasts. For this long-time member of the horologisphere, the time spent “watching” The Clock became a brand-spotting orgy, filled with brief—and often repeated—encounters with the G.O.A.Ts of the industry, such as Rolex, Cartier, Panerai, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Timex, Breitling, Wittnauer, and Hamilton. At exactly 10:08 a.m. we have one of the most famous product placements ever captured on screen. While setting up an explosive device, James Bond (Roger Moore in the 1979 Moonraker), stops to look at his watch and exclaim “Bang on time!” He is wearing a Seiko M354 Memory Bank Calendar, considered by many to have been the very first “smart watch.” 

At 10:16 a.m., Steve Martin, as a grifting evangelical in the 1992 Leap of Faith, tosses and then stamps on his 36 mm Rolex Oyster Perpetual in 18K yellow gold (with the Presidential bracelet) to denounce the trappings of excess. More than the performance is sham. Back in his car, he takes another counterfeit one out of a bag to use in the next town, making a mockery out of the status symbol many fabulously expensive watches have become. Even so, to witness timepieces smashed to smithereens—and there are many such moments in The Clock—is a soul shattering experience. They represent millennia of human ingenuity, cherished keepsakes, and links between generations.

High above the Swiss Alps, let alone the Jura Mountains, angels have no need for watches. Yet, when the heavenly Daniel, played by Bruno Ganz, in Wim Wenders’s 1987 Wings of Desire, comes down to Earth at around 10:45 a.m., he finds himself preferring the fleeting moments of human existence to undifferentiated, boundless eternity. “How long have you been here?” he is asked by Peter Falk. “Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months. Time!,” he answers excitedly. Such profound horological devices in The Clock make us reflect on our own relationship with time. I will never look at my own watch the same way again, a smart one that tells me how many steps I do each day and that my heart is still beating.