11 Minutes (2024)

11 Minutes

In the recently released film, 11 Minutes, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, a Polish New Wave master (Deep End,” “Essential Killing”), there are no actually compassionate characters. It is not like you will recall their names; it isn’t that kind of movie. Just as if you were surfing channels on your television set, “11 Minutes” can be viewed through channel-flicking, but without the remote; and while the channels keep alternating in a faster and quicker mode, static noise keeps getting louder.

Take for example the hot dog vendor (Andrzej Chyra) who openly seduces any woman who passes his cart. Then move on to a young actress (Paulina Chapko) who performs in a shady audition with a low level would be producer (Richard Dormer). The husband of an actress (Wojciech Mecwaldowski). Also consider a drug dealer (Dawid Ogrodnik). Furthermore there are paramedics. And another one is new divorcee(Ifi Ude). And more than this. And many others. And more than everything else.

The film “11 Minutes” might not impress you if you focus on its central idea of the impossibility of finding real truth through surveillance devices like CCTV and smartphone cameras which are supposed to bridge the gap between different parts of our subjective realities. Equally, if you come into this movie looking for a profound statement by a master director, it may leave you feeling let down. Nonetheless, one cannot reduce “11 Minutes” to its climax because every scene in it seems to be contingent upon how one construes the ending.

Skolimowski’s uses of several separate vignettes that eventually merge together but not in the manner most people expect from films such as “Babel” and “Crash” where everything is connected. In conclusion,” 11 Minutes” may appear as an old man’s film but it is not an old man’s work. His anger towards technology aside, his work has an air of playfulness akin to thrillers made by Hitchcock’s disciples John Carpenter, Brian De Palma and Dario Argento who famously mess with your expectations.

So intertwined are these characters’ stories that sometimes they do not know even themselves anymore. And that is fine by me! “11 minutes” represents modernism at its best- no civilization could have been better defined by the ubiquity of digital camera other than ours. Think about how much weight Skolimowski puts on chance occurrences.

Everything can be viewed as a matter of accident and hence why most principal characters in this film start off with their own videos taken through digital recorders (different sizes and shapes) mocking at technology while portraying images lacking any form of enquiry whatsoever. Therefore Ude keeps being followed by her former spouse who secretly hanged some camera around her dog’s neck yet Dormer just carries his camera for show: all he does with it in terms of footage, placement or angle remains meaningless throughout.This means only one thing; why should everybody have a camera if not everybody is an artist?

Though it may seem as an arrogant question, this is one of the most intriguing questions that I find running through “11 Minutes”. Take for example the “ticking clock” plot of this film where you don’t know what’s going to happen, but occasionally a ticking sound makes viewers realize that 11 minutes are dragging on. Skolimowski also pokes fun at how self centered people and artists can be, like that old man painter who watches while an actor jumps off a bridge into water and is then retrieved by divers.

Although he notices nothing as they bring him out, He does not care or knows that there is a movie being filmed there or that the guy who has just jumped from the bridge nearby has simply done so in order to execute a dangerous stunt. There is only one thing which the painter realizes when he glances at his canvas; there is a blotch of ink on its surface in the wrong place. Is this what dilettantes armed with nothing more than their cameras want to incorporate into their daily routines?

Or perhaps all people share some form of myopia which makes it impossible for us to see/relate/to perceive everything always? It’s both really; and that’s why “11 Minutes” seems like such an uncomplicated thriller hidden behind complexity. Turn on your phones and plug out from social media.

Watch 11 Minutes For Free On Gomovies.