The Story of Time

Rolex commissioned this ten minute film that shows us just how mankind has learned to measure time. From the ancient Egyptians through a variety of sundials, egg-timers and then to more precision instruments this ends up, fittingly enough, with one of their wrist watches. The mixtures of stop-motion and real-time animation styles works well and in telling us all about light, shadows and timepieces it also showcases some fine examples of the intricacies of their artistry too. Elegant hieroglyphs; delicate cuckoo clocks with automated characters, perfectly engraved pieces of jewellery and some fairly substantial constructions to house them all feature. The score is a little soporific, but this is still quite a cleverly crafted piece of cinema.