'Time is a flat circle': Television's most iconic dialogue from 'True Detective' explained
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Aside from all the reasons that make cinema an influential element in our lives, one reason that stands out is the deeper meaning in simple terms. When 'True Detective' first came out, it was not considered as big a success as it is today. There is a deeper meaning to the HBO series that is largely overlooked.
The series stars Matthew McConaughey as Rustin Cohle, a character of essential importance to the series, and Woody Harrelson as Martin Hart, who worked with Rustin Cohle in 1995. The two worked together on various cases until 2002, mostly revolving around the Yellow King. The two fell out and didn't speak again until 2012. The series not only follows Rustin and Martin as they work on some gruesome cases, but also takes them through the phenomenal works of some renowned philosophers.
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'Time is a flat circle'
Rustin Cohle was a former detective turned alcoholic who spoke philosophy and was a pessimist. Some of what he says passes Martin by, who is his partner in an important case. 'Time is a flat circle,' the words ring in the mind, painting a picture of a horrible interrogation room, a red-brown color palette that speaks of philosophy and crime. The line 'Time is a flat circle' is spoken in episode 5. The series is set in 2012, but consists largely of flashbacks to 1995, when Cohle and his ex-partner Marty Hart seemed to have solved the murder of Dora Lange. The man they thought was the killer, a drugged-up meth cook named Reggie Ledoux, is the first person to say the words after they track him down to his hideout in the Louisiana backcountry. "I know what happens next...you'll do this again. Time is a flat circle," he says. "What is that, Nietzsche?! Shut the f*ck up," Cohle says. Hart then discovers two children being held captive on Ledoux's property and summarily decides to kill him. These would be his last words.
Cohle is correct that Ledoux is paraphrasing Nietzsche. It clearly looks like the meth cook has read Nietzsche and been exposed to most of his works. Friedrich Nietzsche was a 19th century German philosopher and the words come from his book 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' in which he writes about "eternal recurrence" The concept means that time is an infinite loop and everything one does occurs again and again, in a loop, for all eternity.
How Nietzsche's work relates to events in 'True Detective'?
The book is a work of fiction written in such a way as to reproduce a series of lectures by Zarathustra, a spiritual founder of Zoroastrianism. The events in the book and the persona Rustin in 'True Detective' approach the way these two people speak in monologues, how they perceive the many disappointments of the world by disappearing from the world for a while, and how he hears for the first time the words 'time is a circle' from an adversary, which Zarathustra learns from a rival hermit with whom he struggles on a mountain plateau.
The idea of this philosophy is that we must live a life that is fulfilling, a life that brings us happiness. Nietzsche embraced the idea that time is in an infinite loop, a celebration to be had, an idea to make one's life so rewarding that one will gladly return again and again, throughout eternity.
'Time is a flat circle' in cinema
The term is used to refer to events that seem like a daily change, something that has been seen or experienced before, like deja vu. But the media has moved away from the real meaning of this term and turned it into slang for everyday activities. The real reason for using this term in 'True Detective' is to make the audience realize that the children who were victims of Reggie Ledoux will be forced to relive these events over and over again, for all eternity.