THE END OF TIME written and directed by Peter Mettler. Some subtitles. A Mongrel Media release. 114 minutes. Opens Wednesday (December 12). See times. Read the interview with writer/director Peter Mettler. Rating: NNN
A decade after exploring transcendence in Gambling, Gods And LSD, Peter Mettler returns with another conceptual documentary, this one investigating our perception of time.
It’s an intriguing notion, and for about 90 minutes it’s spellbinding: Mettler visits CERN to explore the concept of celestial time he stops at a Hawaiian lava flow to consider geological time he goes to Detroit to watch the city’s recent financial collapse represented physically in abandoned buildings he observes a Hindu funeral to show us how humans mark time.
And then he overstays his welcome with a very long (and narratively questionable) experimental sequence that feels like a CG version of 2001’s Star Gate sequence. Maybe he’s trying to make us realize how slowly time passes when you’re bored.
