In the head of every human runs a dialogue with oneself. We are thinking about the perception our eyes are scanning every moment. In the head of a filmmaker, these processes are twice as complex, as he is examining the world as if it were life imitating art and vice versa. There's a sly and profound moment in Ross McElwee's "Time Indefinite" where the filmmaker (and main subject) is having his blood drawn, in accordance with the State Laws that require such an ordeal before marriage. Ross is looking at this through his camera and he tells us that he would rather watch it through his viewfinder because it's almost as if it were not happening in real life, but only in the world inside his film. That said, he purports to make his life into a document of absolute truth - sometimes comical, sometimes endearing - always real. What an amazing technique. What a film of exploration. Never have I sat viewing a film that moved me so effortlessly.
He bargains with his wife on the wedding day for ten more minutes of footage. Why would someone do that? He has grown up around his uncles, who shot thousands of hours of home movie footage and when he unearths the footage of his parents' wedding, not seen for ages, he realizes how many moments have been missed. To Ross, those ten minutes he is granted by his wife are ten minutes more he will have documented regarding the great journey of victories and downfalls that his life.
The film appears to be the maximum in solipsism, but, in fact, the opposite is more true. Ross doesn't come off as self-obsessed, but rather concerned. He is concerned with death and the whole issue of mortality that confronts us all. He wants a record of his life. Sure, he has a performance aspect to his role inside the film's world and the "flat but cynical" (To quote the great Paul Swann) voice-over narration, added long after the camera was put away, adds an internal aspect that puts him in center stage; but forget all that - this is a treasure to him. All this footage that everyone he knows has had to cope with being a part of is well-worth it in spades. Ross McEffee has done himself and his family justice when he paints his world out of what it gives him on a daily basis - reality and hidden messages within the everyday humdrum.
Isn't that life, anyway? A series of images processed to mean what you take it to mean? When Ross greets a Jehova's Witness at the door and questions the bible as a means of comfort to the world's collapse, we are seeing in the simplest of terms, one thing perceived two different ways.
This is Ross's life according to Ross. And it's brilliant
