Alec Baldwin wears an Omega Seamaster

Robert Green wears his watch face-down.

Not broken, not forgotten. Face-down, pressed against the inside of his wrist, the dial turned away from the world. Alec Baldwin does this throughout The Edge, Lee Tamahori's 1997 Alaskan survival thriller, for so long that you stop noticing the watch at all. The Omega Seamaster Chronograph stays hidden for most of the movie, and David Mamet, who wrote the screenplay, is not doing this by accident.

The watch was a gift. Mickey (Elle Macpherson), the wife of the billionaire Charles Morse, gave the Omega to Green before the trip. It is incriminating evidence of their affair. The film does not explain why Green wears it face-down, though the effect is clear: the dial stays pressed against the inside of his wrist for most of the movie, and the camera keeps it that way too. We do not see the dial until near the end.

What is interesting about Mamet is that he always gives the lie a physical object. In Glengarry Glen Ross it is the leads. In American Buffalo it is a coin. In The Edge, it is a watch. When Charles Morse, having survived the wilderness and the bear and the man who was trying to kill him, finally hands the Omega back to Mickey, she does not need an explanation. The watch is the explanation.

The Omega Seamaster Chronograph that Green wears has a dark blue dial, three chronograph subdials, and a steel bracelet. It was a substantial sports piece in Omega's late-1990s lineup. Not a declaration of wealth, but the kind of watch that signals competence without announcing it. For a fashion photographer traveling alongside a billionaire and his wife, that calibration matters. The watch does, too. Just not in the way anyone could see.