Time Out of Mind (2015)
Time Out of Mind contains one of actor Richard Gere’s finest performances to date. Unfortunately, the film surrounding that performance isn’t very good.
Gere plays George Hammond, a homeless man in New York City drifting from one experience to the next. Hammond’s days consist of standing around, begging, drinking, and looking for places to sleep. It’s a bleak existence punctuated by the random conversations he overhears, the struggles he has to get shelter and food, and the occasional times he tries to make contact with his estranged daughter (Jena Malone).
Hammond eventually winds up in a men’s shelter, but that doesn’t make his life easier. The shelters are portrayed as a form of prison, albeit one you’re allowed to leave at will. There are rules for beds, rules for showers, and security guards everywhere. Given that some of the homeless are portrayed as less than stable, the guards are necessary, but it certainly doesn’t make the men feel any more human.
The problem isn’t the narrative—homeless man struggles to connect with estranged daughter while trying to make sense of life is fairly straightforward—it’s the way the narrative spools out over two hours that is the issue.
As Gere recently explained on “Live! with Kelly and Michael,” the camera was placed far away from where he would be doing a scene; he stood for hours dressed as Hammond, he said, and no one ever looked him in the eye or really paid attention to him. A lot of that footage appears to have made it into the finished film.
Director Oren Moverman strives for verisimilitude in those scenes, but the technique not only gives the film a strange, voyeuristic quality, it also distances the audience from Hammond’s plight instead of providing insight into what he’s feeling or experiencing. It’s as if we’re spying on Hammond’s life rather than experiencing it.
The first half hour of the movie meanders the way Hammond does throughout his days and nights. Hammond is in denial about his homelessness, too, making it even more difficult for the people he encounters who want to help him to actually be able to help at all.
Why does he have such trouble accepting help? The film gives a few answers, but it’s not enough to make Hammond’s story in any way compelling, and the message the film seems to want to convey about homelessness in America gets lost in the random conversations and seemingly endless shots of Hammond silently standing or sitting or sleeping.
None of this is from lack of acting on Gere’s part, and he does a wonderful job showing Hammond’s inner turmoil with just a look; the scenes where he plays off Malone or Ben Vereen (as a fellow homeless man named Dixon) are where the film comes alive, however briefly. Gere gives a nuanced portrayal of man who’s lost everything and isn’t even sure he still exists, but a good performance isn’t always enough to hang a film on.
Without a fuller understanding of Hammond or his circumstance, it’s hard to be invested in what happens to him. Even slice-of-life films have a beginning, middle, and end, but Time Out of Mind seems content to wander around aimlessly until something happens without fully exploring any particular event or emotion at all. It rambles from one scene to the next without ever getting anywhere.
Time Out of Mind is in theaters and is available on VOD.
