In his theory of cinema, Deleuze (2013) critiques cinematic ‘codes’ as part of his attack on the Saussurean, structuralist roots of semiology. Deleuze places emphasis on the ‘Image’ as a cinematic object, while refusing to work with the ‘Order’, which, for him, is a burden of semiology. He views the Order in purely linguistic terms as a way to structure knowledge using the system of differences. He does not consider the Order as a transcendental object whilst he presents his movement as such. Deleuze's singular image, containing in itself movement – ways of changing – is juxtaposed to the semiological image that always finds itself in a relationship of differences to other images, whether paradigmatically or syntagmatically. A way of dealing with this dichotomy is to privilege image/visuality over representation (the ‘real’ of the narration versus the ‘reality’ of the image), since the spectator ought to assume that somehow the image is never subsumed into narration. Cinema shows things as appearing and being ‘now’; however, I argue that such things are records, a work of memory, creating a gap in terms of temporal association. If cinematic time is a linguistic construct (the extra-orientation), one inevitably arrives at the semiologic fragmentation of time. If cinematic time is an experience (the intra-orientation), one ends up with hermeneutic narratology. If cinematic time is presentation of experience (the outer-orientation), one is buried under the weight of multiple reincarnations of ‘realism’ theories. These contradictions necessitate a series of related questions. What if time exists only as meaning and not as physicality, hence, it lacks the texture of multidimensionality and privileges flatness? Does this open the possibility of thinking of time by means of revealing and concealing? Does non-limitation of time produce a sense of possibility, an opening and a gap? Is film time a way to think of unlimited processes of relations and references? Does film provide a transition from non-knowledge to knowledge, and vice versa?

Deleuze turns to Bergson in order to unravel the mystery of (filmic) time, and he introduces two concepts: time and temporality, or movement. He focuses on the cinematic image understood as the changing being; as a result, it is no longer necessary to inquire about the meaning of images because meaning means difference.