Every movie is different; different stories, different actors, different characters, different languages, different genres. The great constant in all of them is time. The time it takes to make them. The time it takes to watch them. It is the uniting factor in every single film, as it is in all of our lives.Onscreen characters can sometimestravel through time or stop it entirely,and the creators of moviescan useediting to alterthe flow of time. But for the audience in the theater, the clocknever stopsticking. Thats one of the concepts bubbling throughThe Clocka one-of-a-kind, 24-hour video essay.Director Christian Marclay(plus a team of researchers) compiled thousands of film clips involving clocks, watches, and references to specific times of day, then edited them together into a chronological loopthat also functions as a working clock. Whatever time it is when you watchThe Clock, thats the time it is onscreen.Marclay developed The Clockover a period of five years and first showed it publicly in 2010.Its currently on display at MoMA but only during the museums operating hours. (They held one 24-hour screening of the whole thing back in December. It sold out instantly.)I missedThe Clockthe handful of times its played in New York Cityin the past, so Iwas determined to catch it this time. The screening room where its on display in MoMA isnt large, and containsjust three rows of cramped Ikea couches. Once the room reaches capacity, you have to join a virtual queue and wait for someone inside to leave before you get your turn.Once youre inside, you can watch as long as you want. But if you have to get up for a bathroom or food break, youve got to wait on line again if you want to go back in. Hoping to avoid a significant wait time, Ishowed up at MoMArightthey opened at 10:30 AM. Thankfully, I was able to walk right in.A film compiled entirely from snippets of movie scenes involving the passage of time might sound boring or repetitive. (Thewoman who sat down next to me turned to her companionandwhispered Wait,this is it? when the reality ofwhat shed signed up forfully dawned on her.) In fact,the 100 minutes I spent watchingThe Clockpassed faster than any others Ive spent in 40+ years of going to the movies (or to big black rooms filled with Ikea furniture). I couldnt believe how quickly 10:30 turned into 12 PM.If I didnt have a job and responsibilities I would have sat there until MoMA kicked me out. (If MoMAdidnt kick people out when they closed, I would have gladly sat there for 24 hours.)Paradoxically, it seems that calling attention to the passage of time in a cinematiccontextonly makes it move faster.CertainlyThe Clockcontains its share ofsuperficial pleasures. Its fun when you instantly recognize a movie.(Some of the films that appeared in the excerpt I watched:The Breakfast Club,Once Upon a Time in the West,Big Daddy,The 400 Blows,The Bank Job,The Game,Sideways,Falling Down,The Quick and the Dead,High Noon,Bad Santa, Easy Rider, andDressed to Kill.) I also spotted a clip from onetelevision show, which felta little bit likea betrayal of Marclayspact withhis audience. Then again, given that the clip in question was from the episode ofThe Twilight Zone entitled Time Enough at Last, perhapsitsthematic link to The Clocks centralconceit was strong enough tomerit its inclusion.Its also fun when you dont recognizeMarclays film picks, which happens quite often in avideo essay comprised of some 12,000 movie excerpts. A viewing of The Clock is sure to inspire a viewer to go track down (or at least Google) some of the stranger scenes. As soon as I left the theater, Ilooked up the sequencein which a man climbs out onto the face of Big Ben to delay a bomb explosion. (Its from the 1978 remake ofThe Thirty Nine Steps, directed by Don Sharp.)Even stripped of context, that sequence was suspenseful; watching a man dangle hundreds of feet in the air will always make your palms sweat, even if you dont know who the man is or why hes up there. Funny how that and all movies work, somethingyou get plenty of time to contemplate watchingThe Clock.But theres a lot more to The Clockthan that. Itsstructure calls attention to how time works, both on and off screen; howso many thrillers use a literal ticking clock as a storytelling crutch, and how so many others use itto enhance a punchline. Maclayincludes a ton of scenes that feature recognizable actors, whose presence has a stabilizing effect on our attention. (A familiar face in a movie instantly aligns us with that character even if, as in the case ofThe Clock, their actions and motivations are unclear.)Recurring cameos from famous movie stars also allow the viewer to contemplate the effect of the passage of time on the human body. In the feature-length segment I saw this week, CharlesBronson popped up three different times at three totally different ages; once as a young hunk, once as a weathered, confident star, and once as a fading action hero. Photography captures a momentin time, but if you string enough ofthose moments together you start to see time flow and ebb and slip through the proverbial hourglass.Sadly, I could only stay for 100 minutes of The Clockbefore I had to surrender my seat to another willing participant in this illuminating and slightly hypnotic experiment. As I got up to exit the theater, the filmWhatever happened next, I dont know.I left, and The Clockkept going. Time marches on.The Clockis on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City through February 17.Get our free mobile appThe Dumbest Questions People Ask Google About MoviesThese are all real questions from the People Also Ask section of Google. People asked these questions!