Four Quartets and Twin Peaks
There are two elements which highlight flux that are immediately made clear. First is the confused ‘ narrative ’ chronology (if one can even say that there is a narrative); successive images leap backwards and forwards through time, into imaginary worlds or memories, etc. Second is the intertext built with the philosophy of Heraclitus through the two epigraphs from the Fragments of Heraclitus which preface Burnt Norton ; Heraclitus, as mentioned above, being known most significantly for his belief in the constant flux of reality. But perhaps more significantly than either of these is the constant flux of meaning in Four Quartets . Symbols and images recur throughout the movements but change in their significance (sometimes radically) when reappearing. The symbol of the ‘dove’, recurring through Little Gidding , becomes both an image of a Nazi bombardment of London, as well as the obvious Pentecostal dove. 4 The symbol of ‘fire’ similarly takes on contradictory properties becoming, at different moments, the fires of hell, purgatory, and heaven all at once. This approach to meaning highlights that the same words take on different meanings depending on our human experience of them. Time also becomes different depending on our human experience of it; appearing to pass faster while we enjoy ourselves and slower while we are bored.
Four Quartets ultimately foregrounds the phenomenological approach to understanding time, while not disregarding the ontological status of time: presenting a reconciliation between the contradiction between flux and fixity, inclined towards the importance of flux.
Time in film is fluid because films are made up of a collection of still images which, when placed in close conjunction with each other, create the impression of movement. Simply put, films appear to move; even while watching a film containing only a still image, we still have the awareness that we are looking at something flowing in time, something that is not static. However, in the exact opposite regard as the experience of time in literature, the experience of time in film brings us to a realization of an emphasis on stasis. Time in film is fixed, or static, because the human experience of film is fixed. Watching film is a passive act; as opposed to literature, we are not constantly making the active decision to continue experiencing the work of art; the film simply unfolds itself before us. (I will hold that this is still true even with the invention of the remote control, and that the moments in which we are pausing or rewinding or accelerating the film aren’t actually moments that can be categor ized as experiencing the film: they fall outside of what should be factored as part of the work of art.) This is paraphrased by Andrei Tarkovsky in his famous declaration that: ‘From the moment you say action to the moment you say cut, you are fixing reality, fixing tim e’s essence. It is a way of preserving time which, in theory, gives us the possibility of moving forwards and backwards freely, for all eternity. . . Cinema is a mosaic made of time.’ 5 In the opposite manner as Four Quartets , Twin Peaks appears at first to incline itself towards a fluid interpretation of time. Though initially the narrative is strictly linear, with the past only being ‘experienced’ through videotapes or pieces of writing, this chronology becomes entirely disordered as the series progresses. As the viewer, we move backwards and forwards through time without warning or explanation, certain moments repeat exactly, certain other moments repeat with the photographic composition mirrored/flipped, and so on.
4 Egri (1974). 5 See Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky: ‘Cinema Is A Mosaic Made Of Time’ at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JRfeshEboI&t=852s.
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