A simple story of a complicated life. A lonely man who was someone sometime is now reduced to the condition of a homeless and family less looking for shelter and food. He has no identity card of any kind which makes it difficult for him to get social security help or even a birth certificate copy. He was somebody once, he is nobody now and knows it. He has got an estranged daughter whom he meets from time to time at the bar where she works but who doesn't want to have any kind of relationship with him although she helps him sometimes with a beer or little money. He travels from homeless shelter to homeless shelter and subjects himself to long bureaucratic questionings trying to get documentary and security help. He meets another homeless man, an Afroamerican with whom he establishes a more humane relationship. This one is rather talkative and boasts of being (or having been) a jazz player. The last scene seems to show however that may be a more sentimental relation with his estranged daughter is about to start. Richard Gere does an excellent job as the protagonist.

"Cause...normally, it's...you know, the parents takes care of the kid. Not really the other way around."

After watching "Time out of mind" I felt pity and at the same time a kind of relief coming over me. I pitied George who tries to escape the cold daily by hiding in the waiting room of a hospital or just riding the subway through New York. Pity because he always has to find himself a new coat to withstand the freezing cold because he traded his last one in a pawnshop for a bit of cash again. Pity because usually this money is needed to buy some cheap alcohol. Pity because it's difficult for homeless people to pick up the thread again or to be in order with the bureaucratic whirligig. And in addition, I felt this relief because I'm not living in such a hopeless situation and I don't need to struggle for survival all the time. Relieved because I do possess what these homeless people are missing.

My greatest admiration goes out to Richard Gere who succeeded seemingly effortlessly in changing into a person who's standing on the precipice of society. Despite George's unshaven and scruffy appearance, you still can catch a glimpse of Gere's good looks and seductive gaze at times. Even the social assistant who interviews him notices that. But Gere wasn't the most obvious choice in my opinion. It's the most contrarian part he could play, compared to his previous acting. George is the opposite of the characters he played in "American Gigolo" and "Pretty Woman". As Gere himself in real life, these characters are wealthy and without deficiencies. And still Gere manages to come across as the poor man who can't find a way out of the vicious circle he finds himself in. In other words, I'm starting to like the actor Gere more and more. Maybe it has to do with his age. Just like in "The Benefactor" it's not an obvious role or something to get credits for in an easy way. The only weak point in "The Benefactor" was the story on its own. Gere's acting on the other hand was sublime and admirable.

The story may seem rather long-winded, with a lot of boring intervals. However, it felt like the image sought to include George's everyday life. A useless existence with many moments where he's observing things expressionless, dozing off once and a while and patiently waiting until he can return to the safe city center for the homeless. Not that George stays there with conviction and pleasure. In his eyes, this is probably the low point in his sad life and he tried to avoid it as long as possible. The New York city life serves as a soundtrack. Bits of music you can hear from a random bar, followed by a random conversation held by a stranger on the phone or the loud music from a passing car. And this interspersed with images taken from afar out of different angles where we see George as a key figure in the center of this cacophony. A symbolic image that shows how insignificant he is as a person in this metropolis.

You can hardly call this movie a real crowd puller. And many who saw it, will probably claim that it's slow and monotonous. And although that was also my first impression, the film gradually fascinated me more and more. It's been a long time since I enjoyed an interaction between two totally different people like the one here with George and Dixon (Ben Vereen), an ancien among the homeless whose blabbering starts to annoy George from the beginning. Everyone will recognize Ben Vereen from a TV movie, but he was really unrecognizable in this movie. Although the attempt to pick up the thread again when it concerns his daughter Maggie (Jena Malone), this part of the story seems to become less important in relation to the larger whole. The way the movie ends seems simplistic and minimalistic. And yet the end fits perfectly with the rest of the film. "Time out of mind" at least impressed me.

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A thoughtful, deeply moving study of homelessness in urban America, specifically, what it's like to be homeless in New York City. "Time Out of Mind" is a maddening film. It fits none of the expected narrative templates that we've come to expect from a mainstream movie, and because of its seemingly pointless, aimless plot - nothing that matters of any consequence happens to anyone, and the main character, George, appears dazed, lost in every sense of the word - I gave up on it...then decided to keep watching. I finished the movie and felt I had seen something profound, profoundly disturbing about the indifference we show those at the margins, the "failures". It's not an easy film to watch. I think that's the point. This is a subject that we all would prefer to turn away from. When homeless, nobody cares. Virginia Woolf said this about Charles Dickens, "We remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens; we forget that we have ever felt the delights of solitude or observed with wonder the intricate emotions of our friends, or luxuriated in the beauty of nature." This film has re-shaped my "psychological geography" when it comes to NYC. Maybe Woody Allen heard Gershwin while wandering Manhattan. I now hear the distracting noise - the intrusive cellphones, the traffic, all of it - a fierce onslaught that can't be kept at bay. The sound design is relentless and off-putting. And it's true to life. I've been visiting NYC for years, I was there in December. It has never been louder or more annoying. So for George, cursed to live on the street, there is no peace and quiet. Ever. The performances are brilliant, all of them. Gere and Kyra Sedgwick are mesmerizing. And top honors should go to Oren Moverman. What an artist. He wrote another movie this year about the fragility of the mind, about the losing of one's mind, "Love & Mercy". Two fantastic, soul-exploring movies in one year by Oren Moverman. A remarkable achievement.