Synopsis

Barzin's "Leaving Time" unfolds through a series of intimate close-ups of six women. At first, only fragments of their faces appear: eyes, lips and mouths emerging from soft focus. The camera gradually pulls back and sharpens, revealing more of each woman while the separate encounters begin to blur into one another. The spare imagery mirrors the song's themes of emotional distance, memory and disappearance, turning a quiet series of portraits into a meditation on intimacy and the inevitability of parting.

Factoids & Trivia

• "Leaving Time" appeared on Barzin's 2006 album My Life in Rooms, where it runs for 5 minutes and 25 seconds.

• The video was premiered online by Stereogum on November 20, 2006.

• The production uses changing focus and increasingly wider framing as its main visual devices. The shift from partial facial details to fuller portraits gives the piece a feeling of gradual revelation, while the increasing distance suggests separation.

• Six different women appear in the video. Their visual similarities and the video's repeated framing make them increasingly difficult to distinguish from one another.

• Barzin's lyrics mention a face being kept "locked away," and the video's emphasis on eyes, mouths and concealed facial details closely echoes that idea without illustrating the words literally.

• The song's string arrangement was written by Karen Graves, who also arranged strings for Hayden's Skyscraper National Park.

• During a 2010 Paris concert, Barzin reportedly recalled that a particularly beautiful woman had been selected for the video to help illustrate the song.