At the Omni Theater of the Museum of Science

Playing weekend nights indefinitely

CHRONOS is not your typical nature film--no magnified bugs and metamorphosizing caterpillars. Like 1983's Koyaanisqatsi, this 44-minute movie plays with your mind, with your sense of time and space. Using time-lapse photography, surreal images and an eerie soundtrack, producer/photographer Ron Fricke has created a new cinematic experience that beats 3-D and Sense-around.

The Museum of Science hopes to build a cult following for the film by showing it late on weekend nights.

The film has no story; the plot isn't juicy. Chronos is simply a constant, startling stream of images showing time at work through nature's changes. The concept of altered time is so intriguing, the photography so unusual and the music so haunting that the surreal experience of Chronos shouldn't be missed.

Fricke fills Chronos with natural events that occur at unnatural speeds: clouds churn like white water crashing against rocks, water spins dizzyingly and car lights advance so rapidly they been one bright squiggles against a backdrop of blackness. The moon moves across the sky like a second hand on a clock. A lake fills with water and then suddenly drys up. Food decays faster than it could ever be eaten.

If sped-up clouds, erosion, and decay aren't able to disturb your natural equilibrium, though, the train scenes will. Fricke places his camera on the front of an engine and the film accelerates as the train wends though tunnels and around curves and across mountain passes. There's no question you're on a runaway train.

The photography and extensive use of time-lapse technique are not the only things that gives Fricke's film its experiential quality. Because the film is shown on the over-sized OMNIMAX screen--76 feet in diameter and tilted at a 30 degree angle to the horizon--Chronos practically surrounds you. Furthermore, the curvature of the screen warps your perception of the world. Shots of a canyon floor from a high mountain peak are somewhat dizzying and flat deserts appear curved and other-worldly.

The film's altered states are enhanced by a soundtrack that accompanies and complements the wordless action--just what Philip Glass's music did for Koyaanisqatsi. Composer Michael Stearns presents a new age, Tangerine Dream/Andreas Vollenweider sound, adding exotic drums and bells that complete the foreign aura.

In Chronos, Fricke has created a complete sensory experience that renews the time-perception of the audience. It's worth seeing.