| This dissertation examines rhetorics of time in contemporary cinema, outlining the ways that recent films constitute temporal experience for viewers. Focusing on four filmic case studies, this project analyzes the unique matrix of formal techniques that each deploys to orchestrate an unfolding sense of time in film viewing. The productions in question span the post-classical era from the 1960s to the present, drawing from both American and international film contexts. Specifically, this dissertation produces detailed accounts of The Limey (Steven Soderbrrgh, 1999, USA); Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966, USA); 5x2 (Francois Ozon, 2004, France); and What Time is it There? (Tsai Ming-liang, 2001, Taiwan). On the basis of these analyses, I identify four distinct modes of cinematic time (defamiliarized time rationalized time; temporal reversal; temporal duration) to show how each invites us to reflect upon the nature of temporal experience in the contemporary context.;Where recent critical formulations effectively 'still' cinematic time by privileging a static model of film speelatorship, this dissertation conceives filmic temporality differently, as a dynamic exchange between film and viewer. Adapting certain insights from philosophical hermeneutics for film study, this dissertation suggests that attending to temporal rhetorics allows us to uncover the timeliness of cinematic time, or the way that time is always at issue for us, in film viewing. Timeliness relates the formal specificities of film viewing to a wider trajectory of experience that encompasses other films, and other viewings, over time. In this sense, it illuminates the historical dimension of cinematic time for the contemporary moment as something actively mediated by films and viewers. Ultimately, this dissertation highlights the rich nature of temporal experience in contemporary cinema; correspondingly, it proposes the broader value of hermencutical approaches to film study. |
