Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Good Time
2017 · Benny Safdie · Good Time on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 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 how close the camera stays on Connie's face. (camera)
Sean Price Williams shoots long lenses and extreme close-ups, isolating Pattinson's face against smeared, out-of-focus city lights.
Payoff: You are pinned to one man's skin, never given the distance to get your bearings in the city. In the reading: Affection-image. Deleuze calls a face held this close an affection-image, a feeling caught before it turns into action.
Notice the colors bathing every scene: acid green, electric blue, red. (light)
The Safdies push saturated neon and blacklight until color stops just lighting the scene and becomes the scene's feeling.
Payoff: The palette works on your nerves directly, the way a mood works on a body.
Listen for the synth score that never resolves or lets up. (sound)
Oneohtrix Point Never's score stays wall-to-wall and abrasive, refusing the usual cues that tell you when to relax.
Payoff: The music keeps your body at the same pitch of overstimulation as Connie's.
Watch the cramped, real interiors Connie moves through all night. (staging)
The Safdies stage apartments, a hospital, a bail office, and a suburban house as tight, cluttered, unglamorous spaces that trap rather than display.
Payoff: The city itself becomes a maze with no room to think, matching Connie's own lack of a plan.
Watch how rarely Connie's hands or mouth stop moving. (performance)
Pattinson plays Connie as a live-wire who talks fast and touches everyone; Benny Safdie's Nick, by contrast, stays still and unshowy.
Payoff: The contrast in stillness tells you who is actually in control and who is being used.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch Connie's hands: they're always a half-step ahead of his understanding, and the world pays for it.