like tigers on vaseline

At midnight, Marclay constructed a wicked trap. There is a sweeping build: an American in London howls like a werewolf; Gary Oldman howls as Sid Vicious. Orson Welles, in “The Stranger,” plummets off a clock tower. Finally, there is a shot of a clock that has loomed oppressively in the video, appearing dozens of times: Big Ben. It’s obliterated in a fiery explosion—a clip, from the wretched “V for Vendetta,” turned golden through the alchemy of remixing. Yet Marclay undercuts this seeming climax. In the next minute, he segues to a scene in London in which Rhett Butler’s daughter wakes from a nightmare. As Butler comforts her, the window behind them frames Big Ben, fully intact. Marclay has turned the apparent crux of “The Clock” into a mere dream. “You always feel tricked when that happens in movies,” Marclay said. “And the video, in a way, is one big trick.”