The Time Traveler's Wife

THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE        B                     

USA  (107 mi)  2009  d:  Robert Schwentke

While Chicago was all abuzz about Johnny Depp and Christian Bale being in town making Michael Mann’s PUBLIC ENEMIES (2009), this film quietly goes about its business of featuring some of the best Chicago locations since John Hughes shot films in the area.  Secondly, Florian Ballhaus, son of noted Fassbinder and Scorsese cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, seems to be having a whale of a good time behind the camera, which swoops down hallways and flows through various rooms with an unabashed relish as it enthusiastically follows the paths of various characters.  The film does an excellent job of weaving this time traveling story into a coherent whole as it is chock full of interruptions that take us through different time periods.  But the film gets right to it from the outset, when in no time a young boy scared out of his wits from a car crash stands alone on the side of the highway visited abruptly by an older version of himself who tells him not to worry.  Now that’s an opening!  Not sure when the idea of time traveler’s being naked came into vogue, but they’re all the rage now.  Perhaps Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original TERMINATOR (1984), where much of the humor was showing Arnold naked and then finding a way to put some clothes on.  Here as well, each of the moments where he finds himself suddenly arriving from another time period are rather humorous, as he’s always desperately trying to find clothes.  Sometimes it’s done with sound cues alone, as we hear in the background “Somebody stole my wallet” as he coolly hops on a Ravenswood train, wallet in hand, or at one point he arrives in the middle of a natural museum exhibit where all the children gleefully point to the naked man.  Unfortunately his time traveling is involuntary so he is helpless and can’t stop himself from disappearing at a moment’s notice or from arriving stark naked, and usually starving, broke, and in trouble from another time span.  However he can predict the future, because he's already been there.  Again, not sure what the rules are for what you can and cannot mention about the future, but this dilemma was woven into the fabric of the movie. 

Easily some of the best scenes are early on when Henry, a naked adult time traveler (Eric Bana) from the future comes to visit a charming 6-year old girl (Brooklyn Proulx) named Clare, The Time Travellers Wife :: Young Clare Scene YouTube (3:15), where without an ounce of prurient possibilities spends the day playing and telling her magnificent stories, and then explains in exact detail when he’ll be arriving again.  She, of course, becomes fascinated and puts clothes out for him when he arrives and starts making entries in her diary as if this is the coolest experience in the world.  And, of course, it is, much like getting visits from Santa Claus.  That’s the whole thrill of time traveling, the anticipation of wondering what will happen in another time and place.  The same thrill awaits someone waiting patiently for a visitor from a different time period, as what new information will they bring?  It’s curious that they meet so young, and that they eventually strike up a loving and healthy near same age relationship worthy of marriage, but he changes ages when he travels, shown humorously at his own wedding.  There’s an interesting turn of events when 20-year old Clare (Rachel McAdams) meets 28-year old Henry at the Newberry Library in Chicago, but he has never seen her before, yet she has known him almost her entire life and claims they’ve been waiting a long time for this first dinner date.  It’s only afterwards that he goes back to visit her in her childhood.  So the film does a good job playing with these expectations and the strange time chronology.  Both McAdams and Bana are excellent and are onscreen the entire film wrapped in an agonizing tenderness, but their appeal is mostly because they’re intelligent adults who insist upon their own identities and actually have adult conversations together about love, their own failings, and loss.  Adapted from Audrey Niffenegger’s novel, the book was a metaphor for the on again off again state of failed relationships, especially the tendency for men exiting relationships abruptly, but the movie acknowledges these difficulties while accentuating the staying power of love. 

In the book, young Clare lives in South Haven, Michigan, while in the movie, the entire state apparently is her back yard, as no one has ever had a back yard so endlessly vast as this child, who plays alone completely unattended in the green fields that go on for miles, the site for so many of their early visits.  When Clare and Henry do finally get married at her parent’s lavish estate, with all their family and friends in attendance, he inexplicably disappears several times, only to return in various states of duress (completely clothed, by the way) from other time periods, arriving at the altar finally as a suddenly older, graying around the temples, and unshaven version.  It must be said, the Mychael Danna wedding band cover version of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” The Time Traveller's Wife - First Dance YouTube (2:30) was the sappiest version ever heard, but an apt choice.  Later, a comfortably married Clare wants to have a baby, but she keeps losing them unexpectedly, which is causing a great deal of friction between the two, as Henry doesn’t wish to be the cause of someone else having his extreme genetic condition, so he gets a vasectomy, only to time travel back to an 18-year old Clare who at that moment receives his first kiss.  In the book version, Clare is perfectly happy to hear these events recounted later in life, but in the movie version she erupts in anger at him for taking advantage of her in that situation, manipulating her and not allowing her freedom of choice, all under the façade of fate, that it has been predetermined.  This is ultimately the thrust of the movie, as in the throes of love, neither one has control over their own free will, as he disappears at a moment’s notice against his will while she is forced to wait indefinitely, never knowing when or if he’ll ever return, requiring a trust factor that is otherworldly.  In loving him, she literally takes on the role of Penelope who had to wait an entire decade for the return of her adventurous Odysseus, as in both instances, they spend their entire lives continually awaiting their lover’s return.  For those expecting a sci-fi time traveling story, this one has little sci-fi and is all about the lengths one is willing to go for love.  The film version takes some liberties with the end, altering the dark and heartbreaking ending with something a little more hopeful.  It’s still a weeper.   

Reprise

REPRISE                     A        
Norway (105 mi)  2006  d:  Joachim Trier           Official site [us]

Inexplicably, this film opened very favorably in Europe two years ago but is only now finding its way to an American release despite having enormous energy and appeal.  Joachim Trier, born in Denmark and twice Norway’s skateboard champion during his teens while also making several skateboard videos at the time, is a cousin of Danish director Lars von Trier, who at some point in his life felt the need to add the mysterious “von” to his name.  Since the mid 90’s, Danish films have undergone a revival on the world’s stage, producing some of the most prominent directors working today, such as Lars von Trier’s THE KINGDOM (1994), BREAKING THE WAVES (1996), DANCER IN THE DARK (2000), and DOGVILLE (2003), Thomas Vinterberg’s THE CELEBRATION (1998), Soren Kragh-Jacobsen’s MIFUNE (1999), Lone Scherfig’s ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS (2001), Susanne Bier’s BROTHERS (2005) and AFTER THE WEDDING (2006), not to mention Lucas Moodysson in Swedish/Danish co-productions.  What all these films have in common are intelligent scripts and expert direction laying the foundation for some extraordinary performances, oftentimes by unheralded or non-professional actors, and this film is no exception.  The story about two longtime friends who aspire to be writers was written by the director along with his longtime friend, Eskil Vogt, wonderfully expressed from the opening scene when Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman Høiner) drop manuscripts into the mailbox of novels they have written while the narrator toys with the audience by suggesting various outcomes that “could” happen, playfully using freeze frames and quick cuts always keeping viewers a bit off guard, much of it conveyed through a glorious montage of Nordic culture on parade in Oslo (with effective change of speed) that plays to the pulsating punk rhythms of Joy Division’s “New Dawn Fades” Reprise movie cuts where Joy Division - New Dawn Fades sounds in background YouTube (3:17).  While Phillip is immediately recognized as a vibrant new talent, Erik’s spirits deflate in the opposite direction when he hears nothing from publishers, thinking he is an abysmal failure.  But just as quickly, Phillip suffers a mysterious breakdown that may or may not have anything to do with his relationship with Kari (Viktoria Winge), a gorgeous, immensely appealing young girl he obviously still has affections for—all this in the first ten minutes of the film.   

Phillip doesn’t seem to be himself, finding his memory and his interests waning ever further from his grasp, including his mixed up feelings for Kari which frustrate him, as they’re not as vivid as he recalls, adding to his morose view that he has somehow lost touch with the world, shown with a delicate touch, including the quietest, somber music from Ola Fløttum and Knut Schreiner.  At one point we flash forward six days, at another point it’s six months, using an imaginative editing style that keeps moving back and forth in time while remaining focused on the intimate friendship of the two who are collectively part of a close circle of friends, most all of them as well read and smart as they are, which serves as a combustible engine that drives this film with untiring interest and energy, much of it hilarious from the outset, as these guys are endlessly critical of everyone and everything they see, yet are still good natured goofs with one another, where one is a lead singer in a punk band that offers a rousing contemptuous view of the world with songs like “Fingerfuck the Prime Minister.”  When Erik finally hears from an interested publisher that his new novel will be published immediately, he garners all the attention and acclaim that Phillip has been avoiding.  Yet this is not necessarily a good thing for a writer.  Voracious readers when they were younger, both idolized a legendary writer, Sten Egil Dahl (Sigmund Sæverud), who became the voice of his generation before retreating from public view in order to write.   Both feel a connection to hold onto the good natured camaraderie of their friends, yet also stake out an unknown territory within that requires further exploration through writing, a solitary endeavor at odds with social relationships.  Phillip’s intense personal struggle to reclaim what his brain can do is equivalent to the practice of writing itself, where nothing is assured except an internal struggle, shut off from the world outside, just one man alone with his own challenges.  This entire film is a beautiful journey, a quest for meaning, where friends can’t help blurting out their thoughts with each other, blending, in a beautiful way, all their pent up anger and irritation as well as happiness and joy that are so easily interchanged right alongside moments of sadness and gloom.

The actors themselves are noteworthy, suggesting such a fresh ease of comfort in their performances, where the lack of artifice and complete believability is part of the film’s appeal, with an ensemble cast whose distinguishing characteristic is intelligence.  A few notable scenes, Phillip and Kari’s return to Paris where they initially met which couldn’t this time have been more excruciatingly painful to watch, bookended later by his abrupt pronouncement at her workplace, barging in on the mindless repetition of telemarketing offering her only the slightest idea of hope, perhaps the most vulnerable moment in the film where that adrenal rush of hope can be annihilated within seconds yet instead feels like a sudden breakthrough of possibilities.  But certainly the best moment in the film is the sustained brilliance of the party sequence, which relishes its own brand of humor, where the young lads turn the place upside down with the help of an iPod, where the frantically alive music of Kathleen Hanna and Le Tigre’s “Deceptacon” Reprise clip YouTube (2:28) is simply irresistible, perhaps a last bloom of youth where they can do whatever the hell they please before the inevitable onset of adulthood and responsibilities set in, where hard fought principles disappear overnight as they suddenly become all that they found irritating earlier in life.  This is an extraordinary depiction of youth rarely seen in films, as it all feels like we’ve been there before, yet it also offers the best and the brightest with smart, crackling dialogue that doesn’t take itself for granted, that offers a fresh wit with surprising originality throughout, continually altering the pace of the film, weaving in the collective imagination of art, mixing the painfully alone and meticulous work habits with the socially gregarious, leaving open a world of maybes, of what could have been, where multiple ideas literally jump off the screen simply by the way the story is told.  There’s enough of an edge that it capitulates to no one, with some brilliant use of music, excellent hand-held camera work from Jakob Ihre, and despite a taut structure, Trier allows the freewheeling improvisational nature of his characters the uninhibited freedom to penetrate our souls with brash audacity.