"Actor's Watch" focuses on watches worn by actors in movies, television, etc.
For our 50th installment, we will be looking at "Jake Gyllenhaal's watch."
*Source: https://collider.com/
Jake Gyllenhaal has long been known to hardcore movie buffs as a chameleon-like actor with a unique style of acting, but recently he has made a breakthrough in his role as the villain "Mysterio" in the Marvel movies, and has quickly become a popular star actor among young people. In this issue of "Actor's Watch," we will be focusing on his wrist.
Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko (2001)
While sleepwalking through the city, high school student Donnie Darko (Gyllenhaal) is told by a mysterious silver rabbit that there are 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds until the end of the world. When he wakes up at a golf course and returns home, he finds that a falling plane engine has hit his house directly, and the surroundings are in chaos...
*Source: https://qz.com/
This coming-of-age film unfolds like a science fiction film, with a complex causal relationship and time axis in Donnie's worldview where dreams and reality intersect. It is one of the cult films of the 21st century, with many addicted to it, with fans saying, "I don't really get it, but I want to watch it over and over again."
*Source: https://www.reddit.com/
The nerdy high school student Donnie Darko, played by Gyllenhaal, is wearing a typical high school student digital watch. It is not clearly visible, but one theory is that it is the CASIO TGW-10 "Trigraph," the prototype for the three-eyed G-SHOCK "Trigraph dial."
Zodiac
Zodiac (2007)
The Zodiac is a real-life sadistic serial killer who murdered at least five people in San Francisco between 1968 and 1974, and has sent numerous confessions to the police and the media, but has yet to be caught. This is a true-life suspense film that follows Robert Graysmith (Gyllenhaal), an illustrator who worked for a newspaper at the time and conducted his own investigation, as he closes in on the culprit.
*Source: https://screenrant.com/
The director is David Fincher, known for "Seven" and "Fight Club." Gyllenhaal plays an illustrator who becomes obsessed with the case he started to get involved in out of curiosity, and then becomes obsessed with it, closing in on the perpetrator while becoming exhausted.
*Source: https://www.spotern.com/
In the film, Gyllenhaal plays illustrator Graysmith, and he wears a Timex Model 84. It is a battery-powered "electric wristwatch" with no electronic circuitry that was released in 1965. Around 1970, when the Zodiac massacre occurred, Seiko released the world's first mass-produced quartz wristwatch, the Astron, creating a quartz whirlwind in the watch industry. The "electric wristwatch," which was only made for a few years in the late 1960s, is truly a "wristwatch that only existed in that era," making it the perfect watch to depict the era.
Nightcrawler
Nightcrawler (2007)
After getting his hands on a police radio receiver, thief Lewis (Gyllenhaal) becomes a freelance cameraman known as a "night crawler," using information he picks up from the radio to film crimes, accidents, fires, and other incidents, then selling the footage to the media for a high price. In search of more lucrative "exciting footage," Lewis begins to lose his humanity by moving bodies at accident scenes and entering crime scenes, and eventually becomes embroiled in a murder case...
*Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/
Gyllenhaal lost 12kg for the film and played the creepy role of a paparazzi with bulging eyes and a sick look who is devoted to making money in an immoral way. In this film, he wears a Breitling Chronomat Evolution (Ref. A13356) . In the film, it is depicted as a watch he stole. It was originally someone else's watch, and Lewis himself is a morbidly thin man. The watch is worn loosely, expressing the abnormality of Lewis, who does not care about it. The 44mm big case and smooth Breitling five-link bracelet add to the loose feeling, and if they chose this watch for that purpose, it is a fine move by the props department.
*Source: https://productplacementblog.com/
By the way, in an interview to promote "Nightcrawler," Gyllenhaal wore a Rolex Milgauss (Ref. 116400GV) . This one was also worn loosely. Maybe the loose feel in the movie was just "preference"...?
*Source: https://www.hodinkee.com/
Mission: 8 Minutes
Source Code (2018)
A terrorist bombing occurred on a commuter train bound for Chicago. It happened eight minutes after Captain Stevens, a US Army pilot, woke up on the train. When Stevens wakes up after the explosion, his superior tells him that what he experienced was in fact a replay of the memories of the "last eight minutes" of the terrorist victims in Stevens' brains. By reliving the "last eight minutes" of several people, Stevens gets closer to the truth of the bombing.
*Source: https://it.wikipedia.org/
This is a so-called "time leap" science fiction movie in which the same time repeats. The watch that Captain Stevens wears in the victim's memory seems to be a Victorinox Swiss Army Chrono Classic (Ref. 241300) . It is a robust "analog-digital" watch that combines analog hands and a digital display, made by Victorinox, a Swiss company known as a long-established manufacturer of multi-tools and survival knives.
*Source: https://bestwatchbrandshq.com/
Since the film features a repeated "last eight minutes," Gyllenhaal sets the timer on his watch to eight minutes and checks the remaining time over and over again throughout the film.
summary
What did you think?
When I searched for roles using wristwatches as a keyword, I unexpectedly ended up with a list of roles for "men with mental problems" - a sleepwalking high school student, an obsessive man chasing a serial murder case, a sick man who has abandoned his morals for the sake of ambition, a man who can see other people's memories, etc. This can be said to be because "wristwatches express a person's inner thoughts."
*Source: https://www.cultura930.com.br/
In particular, in "Nightcrawler ," the way in which madness and abnormality are expressed not through the watch itself, but through the way the watch is worn, seemed like a rather innovative and eye-opening style.
Well, in the latest Spider-Man movie, "Spider-Man: No Way Home," Gyllenhaal plays Mysterio, the character who sparks the incident. What kind of "madness" will he show us in the future? I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of watch he will choose to match that "madness."
see you!