Markopoulos divided this scene up into two parts: the first is focused on the exaltation of the automobile; the second concerns the obsession with suc­cess and the desire for escape. The caesura is represented by a shot of the mimes launching themselves forwards, an image that is repeated and alter­nated at first with a close up of the mimes side-on and then with an image of the crowd in a stadium; at the end of this process, a sort of cross-over fade, the voice over enounces three times in a row the phrase “wir können im Endspurt noch den Sieg erringen [we can still snatch victory with the final sprint]” (from 7’ 30” to 8’ 27”, in correspondence with bars 11-14 of “structure 3”). The last part features the mimes’ attempts to get out of the box, which are finally blocked by the voice over crying “Halt!”, followed by the image of a political demonstration.

For the following scenes too (B2, 3 and 4, corresponding to structures 4, 5 and 6), Markopoulos’s choices can in part be linked to the typical problems of producing music theatre and in part concern specific aspects of the medium. B2 revolves around the acceleration of the rhythm of modern life and the an­xiety this generates. In the chassis the mimes move in jerks, frenetically asking each other the time or pointing to a wrist watch while the count down from a space station proceeds inexorably. The scene ends with the voice over saying “Short and full time” (in English). In the film version B3 is divided up into two parts, each with its own editing technique, choreography and thematic asso­ciations. The first part represents a situation of panic, with the mimes trying desperately to escape; the shots are interspersed with inscriptions denoting negative emotions – “Trauer”, “Angst”, “Hass” [sadness, fear, hate] – and fi­nally, when the mimes kneel down in submission, an image of a hearse full of coffins, pushed by soldiers. In this first part the director has created a complex counterpoint, treating the audiovisual materials on an equal footing: rapid snatches of music, shots of the mimes first in agitation and then in slow mo­tion, written words, images of the hearse. From the score one can see that Evangelisti grouped the bars together in units that vary in length (from 3 to 6 bars), specifying at the end of each group the emission of a certain phoneme by a mime; in Schoener’s interpretation these moments are marked by a silence. Although he does without the vocal interventions of the mimes, Markopoulos keeps to the score’s macro-rhythm, as we see among other things from the placement of the scene’s turning-point at the end of bar 12. Here there is a brief reprise of the count down in which however “six” becomes “sex” (rein­forced by the change from a man’s voice to a woman’s), introducing a ‘semantic modulation’ towards the area of eroticism. This thematic change is borne out, almost didactically, by the appearance of the word “Liebe”; none­theless it is an alienated love, doomed to fleeting, cold and unsatisfying contacts. This is the most explicitly narrative passage in the film.

“Structure 6”, corresponding to scene B4, uses a notation that resembles the one Evangelisti used in the fourth piece of Random or not random. In the few cases in which the parts contain indications of pitch, the sounds have to be distorted; generally some indication is given of register, type of movement for the sound (glissando) and non conventional performing styles (noise of keys, air blown without producing a note, speaking into the instrument, legno tratto or battuto, tapping finger pad on key, etc.). The aim is to create a magma of sound in which timbre, dynamic, density and tempo are in continual modifi­cation. The score also prescribes the superimposition of three scenic elements: updates of the shares index, the report of the closing stages of a horse race and fragments of previous scenes. Nonnis’s ‘guide’ indicates that the mimes should become increasingly dissociated, joining, individually or in groups, the three documentary narratives and swapping between them. The increasingly frenetic process culminates in a disaggregation of the bodies of the mimes, lit up in sections for brief instants. Markopoulos takes advantage of a silence in Schoener’s interpretation, which corresponds to a sort of reprise of the begin­ning (bar 20), to divide this scene too into two parts. For the whole of the first part we see a mime scribbling down numbers in an imaginary notebook while the financial and sporting reports are heard; in the second part the mimes go back, randomly and without any reciprocal interaction, to the activities of driving, telling the time and escape enacted in previous scenes.

The final scene is supposed to represent the glorification of the system and at the same time prepare for the collapse of the box, which occurs once the cur­tain has come down following the question from the auditorium: “So recht oder nicht? [Is this how it is or not?]”. Markopoulos’s version departs from these indi­cations, concentrating on the mimes imprisoned in the box, which now begins to look like the living room of an apartment. In terms of the music Evangelisti re­calls passages from the preceding structures, and accordingly the director inserts frames of Schoener conducting. In semantic terms the repetition of the injunc­tion “Bleibt ruhig, Freunde! [Keep calm, friends]”, alternating with the word “Beruhigungsmittel [tranquilliser]”, helps to produce an atmosphere of calm resignation. Markopoulos opts for an open-ended finale: immediately after the repeated question “So recht oder nicht?” the mimes are shown sitting in the chassis in civilian clothes, looking at the audio-spectators as if they were in front of a television.