Another brilliant part of the movie is the way in which the character is presented to us, a scene of almost two minutes, in which we see a rewinding tape, a control panel and some colored bars that give way to a sepia image, is Christine, framed in an image on television and moving artificially, stiffly, almost like a machine and then looks directly at the camera and her first words are «And we´re back in living color», while an interview with President Nixon begins.
Then the framing opens and we no longer to see the protagonist through the television but she is sitting on the set interviewing an empty chair with the only company of some plastic flowers, we are already in her world, something that will be a constant throughout history as if it were a «menine effect» in which the viewer is both observant and observed; then a moment of silence as he nods as if listening to the answer to the question he has just asked, a world in which the protagonist tries to talk to someone but is alone. It seems no important but the scene is already giving us many clues about the protagonist, those simple elements will represent her inner demons that will be present throughout history. Then the movie title appears just above the bouquet of artificial flowers.
The empty chair will represent her loneliness; hes inhability to connect, to be abandoned, to interact, no matter how much he tries throughout history every time a character tries to approach her to take an interest in her situation or simply to speak, she will be interrupted by something she breaks that connection or for Christine herself who, without pretending it, moves everyone who comes to her to take interest in her situation and whenever Christine asks for help or needs it, no one will be available and she will be left alone which will further aggravate her situation.
Artificial flowers will be an allegory of their frustration and fear of failure, Christine are those beautiful but lifeless flowers, sterile, attractive but unable to make you feel anything because they do not give off any smell, real but false at the same time, without freshness, ignored, almost a superfluous accessory, a continuous reminder of his personal and professional stagnation, of his lost youth, of the time she is spending. Christine herself will go out to look for fresh flowers awakened at a time in history but obviously she won’t find them and the artificial ones will still be there.
The flowers in the history are an important element in the plot because they will be the trigger for Christine’s paranoia as well as a cruel metaphor for her situation. They are going to be the drop that fills the glass of that physical pain that we see and the psychological one that we can intuit. The flame that causes the bomb to explode violently after having burned a very, very long wick. The flowers have three moments in the movie, the first one when Christine is doing the false interview with Nixon, she looks at them, touches them but does not give them much importance and ends the fictional interview with the question to the empty chair: “Is it paranoia if indeed, everyone? is? coming after you?. The second is while he is recording an interview and he has just realized that he has to have an operation and that surely he will not be able to be a mother, which causes him a very strong anxiety attack while withdrawing from the set sobbing: “Someone get fresh flowers”
The third is when she argues with Mike Nelson when she can’t stand the frustration that causes him to not be able to make the juiciest stories and check that everyone seems to move forward except her and tells them that the flowers are fake» like us» who are a joke and then she arrives at his house and argues with his mother blaming her for being responsible for not knowing how the world works and suffering a kind of psychotic outbreak while screaming desperately: «Why won’t anyone just listen to me?» in a terrifyingly throaty voice.
A “fragile” sign attached to the packaging of a machine that they are putting in the studio and that they leave just behind their backs as labeling reveals its condition. All this in just two minutes.
Bruxismo nocturno 