The Time Traveler ’s Wifeis a story about deja vu . Everything that happens has already occur , and will chance again , thanks to the storey ’s endless time loops . So peradventure that ’s why everything in the movie feels so tediously intimate . looter …
Imagine if someone from the future came and told you what was going to happen to you : You ’d be immobilize in a tale . In a sense , that “ trapped in a story ” notion is what TheTime Traveler ’s Wifeis about — bothAudrey Niffenegger‘s masterly book and the unexampled movie . The difference of opinion is , the novel uses a million seemliness notes to show how you’re able to still live a joyful life , even though you bed you ’re trapped inside a story you ca n’t really change . The picture , meanwhile , just shows us that we ’re trapped and there ’s no relief valve from the plodding story heartbeat .
In most love story , after all , you do it what ’s start to happen . Including prison term travel as a concept just solidify the sense we already have that love stories — specially Hollywood love stories — are utterly predictable , and the most you’re able to gestate is cautiously titrated level of quirkiness , mostly coming from the put up roll . Unless the leading man is Jack Black — then he buzz off to bring the quirkiness himself .
But of course , in a magnanimous sense , life is a story whose ending is known to us from the beginning , since as Prince says , “ We ’re all gon na die . ”
The canonical story of The Time Traveler ’s Wife is one that could be intensely schlocky , but is n’t at all in the novel . Henry De Tamble has a weird , made - up genetical condition that causes him to become unstuck in time , and he journeys back to emotionally meaning import in his own life-time . ( He chew the fat his own mother ’s death often . ) And he frequently appears during the childhood of Clare Abshire , the woman he marries as an adult . Because she grow up seeing him as this mysterious , sophisticated spectre , she grow to love and mythologize him — only to have to make a relationship with the real Henry when she assemble him in veridical meter . And then , of course , Henry ’s always vanishing into the past and succeeding while he and Clare are building a life .
I just re - read Niffenegger ’s novel this week , so I apologize if I speak about the leger as much as I do the movie . ( The truth is , the book impressed me anew , and the movie seemed instantly forgettable . ) The novel is a meditation on time , and the fashion in which we ’re all trapped inside linear time — even Henry , who ca n’t stop catch older or march on towards the bad thing he knows are expect for him . And yet , all the ways in which we ’re all prison term travelers . Niffenegger pack in funny reflexion about the socially constructed nature of time — you could travel backward an hour just by crossing over from Michigan to Illinois . The longer Clare and Henry are together , the more she , too , travels backwards in time , except that she does it in her idea . She ’s constantly thinking about the affair that get hold of place between the two of them when she was a child — even when Henry is n’t physically returning to them .
As Henry tell towards the end of the volume , minutes and years are “ the same affair ” when you ’re dealing with a traumatic or powerful event — something that go on decennium ago can feel like it pass just now . His time - slipping consideration just makes that fact less metaphorical .
In all family relationship , Niffenegger seems to say , we are constantly living in both the past times and the future — you ca n’t help reminisce about how the kinship started , and you ca n’t help think what ’ll happen when you have a child , or one of you go away — or dies .
Like I pronounce , this fib would be banal , chintzy or even squicky in the hands of a less sure - handed author . But Niffenegger render these characters enough life sentence , enough outlandishness , to make the Henry - Clare relationship find like one you ’ve hump . Clare grabs Henry ’s cock through a hole in his lawsuit , during their wedding , to essay and keep him from skid off through the timestream during their hymeneals ( and it does n’t puzzle out . )
So , since I re - read Niffenegger ’s novel in good order before going to see the motion picture , I can report that the film follow the social structure of the novel quite closely , with a few change . ( You ’re not go to see a middle - aged Bana take an 18 - year - old McAdams ’ virginity . Also , the Gomez - loves - Clare subplot is gone , probably for the best . ) The skeleton is the same , but in the movie it ’s covered with flab .
It would probably be out of the question to convey the book ’s awesomeness in a moving picture , but the screenplay ( by Ghost scriptwriter Bruce Joel Rubin ) does n’t even try on . Instead , it ask Niffenegger ’s basic story and uses it as a fomite for such consuming schlockiness that I was sicken . In the novel , Henry and Clare are both witty and rotund , talking about their relationship and their lives in self - aware , clever fashion . In the movie , they mostly talk like little kids — Clare , in particular , is whiny and annoying , something she never is in the book .
The swelled problem with the film is the dialogue , aboveboard — you ’re not going to be able to pack as much complexness into a pic as you could into a novel , of course , but every single word that come out of these people ’s mouths is utterly banal and dull . There were dozens of moments where or else of suppose something else and letting the subtext convey an emotion , the characters stated their emotions in the smooth possible way : “ I am feeling anxious . ” “ I am fill with unease . ” That form of thing . The screenwriting is so hamfisted , after a while everyone sound like an android trying to identify the proper emotion for the position .
It ’s uterly purposeless to say that the pic version of a book is high-risk than the root material , or that the movie ruin the book . I am not saying that at all . alternatively , I am saying : Niffenegger ’s basic story could be intensely schlocky in the wrong hands , and she nullify that pitfall with a balletic thanksgiving . The moving-picture show dives in good order into it . It would have use up Brobdingnagian science and determination to deflect sickness in craft the story of a homo who ’s constantly disappear on his married woman becuase he ’s traipsing off to visit her as a fiddling fille . And the picture show simply lacks that skill , and what ’s defective , it does n’t wish .
On the plus side , the movie is genuinely odd in role — including some theatrical role that are lifelessly serious in the account book — and star Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams have great comic timing , when they decide to playact the material for laughs . The interview I see the film with laughed rollickingly and often . So there ’s that .
My biggest trouble with the moving picture , actually , was that I did n’t wish these variant of Clare or Henry — they seemed shallow , boring , petulant . Clare whines an awful lot about the fact that Henry keeps disappear , even though she know he ca n’t control it and is trying to prevent it at all costs . The motion picture seems determined to make melodrama out of moment that should be quiet , and to produce comedy out of moments that should be dramatic .
In many ways , TTTW reminded me of a somewhat worse version of The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button — they ’re both about a homo who has a weird condition , and the char who loves him . In both , the man ’s term obligate him to vanish on the woman just as they ’re make a sprightliness together . ( Although Benjamin Button has a choice , and just does the faulty thing because he ’s an asspot . ) And they ’re both intensely tinny , drowning us in sentimentality because they ultimately do n’t suppose there is any meaning in human family relationship . ( Sentimentality being the rich , creamy sauce you rain cats and dogs over the all important nothingness of empty love story . )
It makes me sad , because there seemed to be a boomlet in smart , quirky literary novel that played with time , about five old age ago : Niffenegger ’s novel was one of them , and Andrew Sean Greer ’s Confessions Of Max Tivoli was another . And now we ’ve gotten the movie reading of that boomlet , with TTTW and Benjamin Button ( which felt like an adaptation of Max Tivoli , even though it officially was n’t . ) These moving-picture show are like the chick - flick variation of G.I. Joe — cheesy , silly , and skylark one - dimensional persona . It ’s only sad because the books they ’re based on actually did require smarter takes , and lord know we could use some more persuasion - provoking , grown up skill fabrication level .
In the end , though , what I really ca n’t forgive the movie for is say that we ’re immobilise , there ’s no point , it ’s all useless . Because it never even judge to answer the enquiry Niffenegger deals with in her book : What do you do when everything is predestined ? How do you make a meaningful life ? alternatively , it just delight in its own predictability and dullness , because it ’s a Hollywood love story . And predictability is the Hollywood love account ’s meat and drink , without which it withers away .
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