A beach. An endless beach. An ever-receding horizon. Beings of the same species stranded on its shores. Some from the dawn of time, some from its oblivion. All stranded like a row of beached whales, except, they can’t be mined for oil and they are mobile.
A walk commences. A walk towards the horizon. This walk is scored by Johann Johannson. The composition is funereal. Mothers reunite with sons they lost in the war, and bands separated by the gulf of space and time are reunited again. John Lennon resumes his position as the leading man. But something has changed. Instead of all his troubles seeming far away, the first line he sings is “Suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be”. As they say, the devil is in the detail. A bullet has grazed through his face. A bullet meant for him but missed by a split second intervention.
Snowflakes glide from the endless skies and melt upon contact with the surface. One of them is the fabricated skin of Officer K. Lying on the shore with a bullet wound on his chest, blood trickles out of him and coalesces into a puddle of which even some of the snow is now a part. He stares ahead, his vision gradually blurring, at Rick reunited with his daughter and the two of them walking with the others. K’s vision, at the sight of this, fades to black. The bullet was meant for Lennon.
Bowie searches for Mercury in this throng. Once they finally find each other, the remaining members of Queen follow suit. The guitar strings, piano notes, and drums start swelling up with both Bowie and Mercury in unison incessantly crooning ” This is our last dance!”
Kiarostami, a creature of habit, is rolling his camera and documenting the walk while subconsciously splicing it into a verite-narrative. One of his creations, the down-on-his-morale cab driver Mr. Badii, looks at the sand on the shore and finds it reminiscent of the golden dust in the mine all those evenings back. Kiarostami strikes up a conversation “Mr. Badii, where is your taxi?” To which Mr. Badii replies, “Must be buried somewhere! Also, tell the doctor that I don’t need the sleeping pill prescription anymore!” Kiarostami replies, “Has someone finally accepted your macabre job offer?” Mr. Badii keeps on walking ahead and Kiarostami sifts through the crowd for a new subject, the camera still rolling.
For Godard, everyone appears to be dressed in red and the crowd has frozen or rather the crowd is walking while appearing to be frozen while they strike conversations with each other without moving their lips and what Michel said to Patricia still remains an erroneously translated mystery.
This beach is a bomb shelter that humankind has bunkered down in as the clock strikes twelve for them as a species. The collective human experience disintegrating into crumbs as the moment passes. This bomb shelter is probably a last straw. The bombs are being rained by time itself. Hence, this bomb shelter is a time shelter.