Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Predestination
2014 · Michael Spierig · Predestination on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch who stands behind the bar and who sits in front. (staging)
The Spierigs hold two figures across a countertop, one serving and one talking, for most of the film's middle. The blocking makes it an interrogation without either party calling it one.
Payoff: The geometry decides who has the power in the room.
Listen for the music dropping out during the bar talk. (sound)
Peter Spierig wrote the score himself and keeps it off the bar entirely. What you get there is ambience, glass and voice. The strings are saved for the scenes being described.
Payoff: Feeling is coded as belonging to the past. The present is left dry, so you have to supply your own reaction.
Count how long the camera stays on one face. (camera)
Ben Nott shoots the conversation in close and medium-close holds and lets the camera drift instead of cutting for emphasis. For long stretches its only job is to stay with someone telling a story.
Payoff: A genre film hands its second act to a face and a voice. That is the whole bet the picture makes.
Look at the Formica, tin ceilings and glass ashtrays. (setting)
Matthew Putland builds four decades of America out of small correct objects in tight frames rather than streets and skylines. Tailoring, signage and bar fittings carry the year.
Payoff: The period is made of things you could pick up. Fitting for a film about a life reduced to its documents.
Watch Hawke's face while the other person is talking. (performance)
For most of the film he is the listener. Hawke plays the Agent tired, warm and slightly wrong, a man whose kindness carries an agenda.
Payoff: He has to be interesting while receiving, and the performance is built on listening.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the bar. Almost everything that matters in this film happens between two people and a countertop.