Romance/Drama | rated PG-13 (A,N) | starring Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, Ron Livingston | 1:47 mins
As a young girl, Clare (Rachel McAdams, Red Eye) meets an older man who emerges from a forest clearing and tells her that he is from the future, he knows all about her and one day they will meet. Because of this she is able to recognize Henry (Eric Bana, Funny People) in a library year’s later. Their romance blooms into marriage, a relationship complicated by his time traveling, a genetic anomaly that sends him back and forth through significant events in his life randomly and involintarily.
I wonder if the 1-season NBC drama Journeyman was inspired by Audrey Niffenegger’s novel The Time Traveler’s Wife. That was the first time I saw the story of a man who without any aid, involintarily gets pushed through time while his dotting wife was left in the present to wonder how it was straining their marriage. But Journeyman was usual episodic client-based drama in which Kevin McKidd helps out whomever he meets in the past that week. Greatfully, director Robert Schwentke’s adaptation The Time Traveler’s Wife doesn’t go that way. Time travel in this film is more selfish and personal, limited to Henry’s life. It’s a different take on a subject usually fodder for sci-fi nerds to argue over the rules of, dipped in the sugary sweet resin of a romance in a way I haven’t seen before.
While I suspect both of these genres will pull the movie apart for most viewers, too disjointed for romantics, too romantic for geeks, I enjoyed the mix. Wife has a smooth flow that I appreciated, gliding through the relationship, through time, slowing only at the key moments. Their relationship isn’t built on coincidence or some meet-cute movie scenario but a preordained destiny. It exists because it existed in some clean pass through this lifetime that we never see. Without the usual cliches, Schwentke relies on McAdams and Bana to sell the authenticity, which they do – not as an epic love story but enough to make the movie work. But because of it’s highlight reel narrative we continually feel at arms length from them.
The movie brings up so many ideas that it can’t help but feel like it’s skimming the surface of each of them. What I really found interesting here was the way time travel was treated as a genetic abnormality and the modest effect that 3-dimensionally fades Henry from the present when he travels feels fresh. And I liked that the movie did not, ridiculously, let his clothes travel along with him. Even if that means that most of his time in the past is spent looking for a way to hide his shame, it makes sense. It also means the movie gets to bust through the whole idea that people believe he is insane, converting them to believers the second he disappears and leaves a man-shaped pile of clothes in front of them.
It gets better. The 2nd half of the film almost plays like a sequel to the first, taking the film up another level when Clare becomes pregnant. It’s here where Wife gets really creative, folding the plot over and inside itself in a deliciously entertaining way that well explores the time travel device.
Ultimately, through it’s story and structure, The Time Traveler’s Wife becomes a sweet, sad and high-minded parable about how life is lived in moments. I appreciate a romance that has more on it’s mind than getting two people together. It’s a solid, pulpy genre movie for those who don’t mind a little science fiction with their romance or a little romance with their science fiction.
I completely agree with you about the film skimming the surface of each idea. I know it’s a film and they had to keep it to a certain run-time, but if you read the book each part of the story is expanded upon in so much more depth and is far, far more emotionally-involving than the film.