Bad Timing

They had at least one thing in common: crushing anxiety. Hair pulling, teeth gnashing frustration. A sincere desire to know exactly what the other wants.

Well, there is some clarification. They both desire each other physically. Animalistically. Sexual sparks that engulf both souls right through to their guilty bitter emptiness. And yet they continue, until one of them can take no more. Then, once the prurience has worn off as it always does, she cries out further exasperation, a litany of soul-searching that, once begun, cannot be silenced.

I don't want anything of mine, let alone yours. I just want to be allowed to give...I'm not ambitious...don't use the word 'love' again......

He is too involved now. But mainly with himself.  As a research psychiatrist, he has been trained (wired?) to analyze every last particle of every circumstance.  He'll compose theorems on his partner's non-response to his advances.  He'll construct proofs on why her responses are incorrect.  She cries out again.

I wish you'd stop defining me.

I wish you'd understand me less and love me more.

He obsesses. She finds another lover. Then another. She loves him, but can't be singular. It's not in her blood. He loses his mind. She loses hers. She falls into a coma. He finds himself at the hospital, answering questions from an investigator, who may well be as screwed up as the whole lot of them.

Director Nicolas Roeg's 1980 BAD TIMING is as painful an examination of human relationships as I've ever seen. I didn't so much watch this film as much as I eavsdropped on it. I always felt I was just meters away from the these people. I was horribly embarrased to be there. No, not just while they made love, but while they sat in silence. That was worse. It was real. I know, having been there (and been there). Anyone who has ever attempted a relationship with such a dynamic personality will feel the burn of recognition. Like one online reviewer so perfectly described, "watching BAD TIMING is like having cheap liquor poured over your old romantic wounds."

Theresa Russell is simply dynamite. Her Milena is a complex, awesomely tortured soul who you might call a "tramp", a "harlot", or just simply confused. She tears up the screen both with her alarming outbursts and her silent brooding. She's 0-60, at any given time. That sort of volatility doesn't quite fit into Alex's (Art Garfunkel) protocol. Why can't the woman just act normally, he wonders, sometimes aloud.

Milena already has a husband, a much older gent (Denholm Elliott) who informs Alex that "she'll get bored with you, too." Milena seeks affection, but beguiles men with her external beauty. They crave her, but a free spirit can't be captive. Most of her lovers get it. Alex is undone by it.

Alex gets an assignment from Intelligence. Provide a psychological profile on suspected Czech Stefen Vognic. Is he suspected of being a spy? We find that he is indeed Milena's husband. Alex also sees Milena's photo in his file. The obsession has just become even more ignited. He researches. He also curiously leaves the file open at the coffee table, in plain view for Milena to discover. Does the non-confrontative Alex want to be caught here? Is he more complex than we thought?

One terrible evening, Milena tries to kill herself. Alex comes over, watching as she struggles on the floor after her ingestion of sleeping pills. He doesn't help her. In a gradually expanding flashback interspersed throughout the running time, we learn more. Alex finally does something.

The film opens with Milena being rushed to the hospital. She is not conscious. As the film progresses, we cut back to a team of specialists who attempt to revive her. Roeg utterly dispenses with any attempt at linearity. We see Milena scream at Alex on the stairs, then we see them on their second meeting. The viewer is disoriented. Many films have utilized this technique before and since. An excellent latter day case study: 21 GRAMS. But Roeg uses the zigzag editing to create a painting that is at once striking, nausea inducing, and stimulating.

He also uses music to great effect. Any film that opens with a Tom Waits tune ("An Invitation to the Blues") automatically receives merit in my book. Later, Billie Holliday and Who songs are played at key moments, underscoring the narration. Keith Jarrett's "Koln Concert" is used stunningly at least twice during confrontational scenes. Those strident chords, thundering refrains against the mounting discomfort. This is some soundtrack. Roeg's genius with it has rarely been equalled, though certainly Scorsese and Wes Anderson have exhibited similar mastery.

There is also Inspector Netusil (Harvey Keitel). An American transplanted here in Vienna. He hammers Alex with inquiries. Quietly lays subtle traps to perhaps catch Alex in a discrepancy. He is positively actuarian in his attention to details like when a radio station signs off and how a crease of a bedsheet can disprove an alibi. But he's also a student of the mind. Just like Alex. Netusil knows what happened. He prods for a confession, but he wants to know why. As we return again and again to the interrogation scenes, we watch Netusil unravel much like Milena and Alex have, and will. What is chronology in the Roeg universe?

While Russell is great, the male leads don't fare nearly as well. Garfunkel, of course, was one half of a rather famous singing duo. While his ineffectualism and academic exterior suit the part, his acting range is severely limited. At key moments, his weak performance undermines the dramatic power of a scene. You could argue that such a limp personality makes Alex the sort of cold fish intellectual for which the screenplay calls. But I think of how much more powerful it could have been with someone like, say, John Hurt. Someone who could have put across more emotion, even emotionless emotion.

Indeed, in a contemporary interview with Russell on this Criterion disc, she recalls how difficult it was to act opposite someone so inexperienced. "I had just worked with Robert Mitchum and Bob DeNiro, so it was a challenge," she states politely.

Keitel, unfortunately, also disappoints with his at times flagrantly bad performance. Far out of control. He's quiet, then he's ranting, then he's contemplative. Russell does all of this switching with great ease; Keitel comes off like a rank amateur in some bad community theater production. Bad timing? Bad choices, Harve. At one point, he removes his shirt, and then I braced for oh dear, another Keitel nude scene?! Thankfully, that did not happen.

During the questionings, it almost becomes a contest as to who can give the worse performance, Garfunkel or Keitel. How could Roeg allow this? Admittedly, the director is known for uses of his actors as mere tools to get across his often shocking visions (see THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and DON'T LOOK NOW, both brilliant films), but I just have to wonder how much better BAD TIMING would've been with expert portrayals of two screwed up males. Perhaps Roeg was saying something. The screwed up female fares better. I don't think you can claim any misogynistic point of view here.

However, the U.K.'s Rank Organisation, the film's distributor, described BAD TIMING as "a sick film made by sick people for sick people". Reading that, I think it most be a reaction to a single scene that I have not described, of what happens during the last moments of Alex's visit to Milena's apartment on that terrible night. It is shocking and awful. The rest of the film? Yes, these are sick people. But they are fascinating. So vivid a look at the confusion of love/sex I've hardly seen. Roeg dives head first into the material. And we are as exhausted as the characters by the end.