Time & Perspective Quote by Mike Figgis

Mike Figgis is pointing to the kind of growth that comes from risk, not from accolades. After the breakout success of Leaving Las Vegas, he could have stayed on a conventional track. Instead, with Timecode and The Loss of Sexual Innocence he pushed into formal experimentation, and that push seems to be what he values. Timecode, shot in real time with four simultaneous continuous takes, turns the screen into a grid of unfolding narratives. It is not just a storytelling device; it is a reimagining of how attention, performance, and editing can work when the cut is taken away. The Loss of Sexual Innocence likewise abandons strict linear plot for an evocative, image-led structure. Both projects test the edges of film grammar, inviting improvisation from actors, fluid camera choreography, and a closer integration of sound, music, and movement.

Moving forward as a filmmaker here means developing a personal language rather than refining an existing formula. Experimental constraints force new solutions: how to sculpt rhythm without traditional editing, how to cue the audience across four frames, how to make meaning from juxtaposition instead of exposition. These films did not court mass audiences, but they opened technical and aesthetic pathways that Figgis could carry into later work, including his interest in digital video and live cinema. The reward is in the tools acquired and the confidence earned from proving that cinema can be bent to new shapes.

There is also a quiet assertion about artistic criteria. Success measured by awards or box office is not the same as success measured by evolution. Projects that complicate process, even if messy or polarizing, can be more formative than polished triumphs. Figgis suggests that forward motion in art depends on experiments that reorganize the artist’s habits, and that the most valuable projects are the ones that change how you see, shoot, and listen.