ALWAYS LATE: a review of "The Time Traveler's Wife"

“THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE” Directed by Robert Schwentke
*1/2 (one and a half stars)


Do you remember the following great scene from 1989's “Back To The Future Part 2”? After Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) have found themselves trapped within a grim, alternate 1985, Brown frantically attempts to explain the fractured space-time continuum to Marty on a chalkboard. He draws one line to represent the 1985 they know and love and then, he draws another line, jetting outwards from the original, to represent how and when the time line had been altered. Yes, it is a tremendously simplistic way to describe a sequence of events that may only be fully understandable through an intense devotion to string theory but hey, for the purposes of this movie, it worked. In fact, ever since that film when I have been confronted with time travel narratives in books and movies, I always refer back to Doc Brown’s chalkboard explanation. It really helps me to ground the action and events so I can follow the story appropriately. Yet, there is one other crucial element that makes any time travel tales work at their best, and that, of course, is the strict attention to the characters their motivations and the story’s emotional core. If we did not care about the trials and tribulations of McFly and Brown as people, all of the conceptual zigging and zagging would be meaningless and no one would’ve sat through one film let alone an entire trilogy.

I am beginning this review with that anecdote because several years ago, and based upon a dear friend’s recommendation, I picked up a copy of the Audrey Niffeneger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. I will admit to having an air of curiosity and skepticism, as I tend to gravitate away from the massive best-sellers (aside from the Harry Potter series, of course) and my natural reluctance towards reading science fiction. My friend not only assured me of the book’s artistic quality but also that the story had a foot firmly planted in the real world with the other planted in fantasy. Without any further hesitation, I will tell you that I dearly loved this book, like so many other readers. It reached me, spoke to me and actually became one of my favorite books of the last few years. For the uninitiated, the novel takes place in modern day Chicago and follows the respective paths and love story of Claire, an artist and Henry, a librarian afflicted with a rare genetic code that enables him to time travel without warning. Throughout the novel, Niffeneger weaved a darkly romantic and emotionally wrenching tale that simultaneously bridged the gaps between science fiction, concepts of fate and a painfully epic, while also intimate, romance. In my eyes, The Time Traveler’s Wife also worked as a metaphor, quite possibly for two partners of a relationship where addiction or depression is an obstacle. Henry, afflicted through his uncontrollable time traveling remains absent, and Claire, so deeply in love, is always the one who waits for his return. It was a highly compelling novel; one that even featured a daring and emotionally ambiguous conclusion, which provided readers with a debate of whether the story was an argument for the eternal devotion to that one true love or a condemnation of endlessly waiting for someone who will never fully arrive.

As I have always said, regarding film adaptations of books-especially cherished ones…books are books and movies are movies. It is the job of the filmmakers to not only honor the source material but to conceptualize and determine how best to make the material work visually. I concede that it is a filmmaker’s trap, as whatever vision they create will never, ever match the ones created inside each reader’s brains and hearts. That said, Director Robert Schwentke’s terrible adaptation of the novel fell completely and desperately flat, as it was a series of disconnected “greatest hits” moments from the novel that never coalesced into a resonant whole.

I will try my best to describe the plot, whose time travel set-up is initially confusing. As with the novel, we are introduced to Henry (Eric Bana), the extremely reluctant time traveler, who disappears without warning and nakedly arrives in a different time and place, only to find himself returning to where and when he came from moments later. Through his specific chalkboard history of time jumping, he meets Claire (Rachel McAdams) for the first time in the Chicago library where he is employed yet for her specific chalkboard history, Claire first met Henry in a meadow at the age of six and has been waiting much of her life for this monumental reunion. It is an ocean deep love that Claire has held for most of her life and once the relationship becomes a reality, culminating with their marriage, the pitfalls of loving a man who cannot be relied upon to be fully present takes its toll. Now this is a great opening for a story, film or novel, but what made the novel succeed where the film failed entirely, was that aforementioned strict attention to characters, and when dealing with a tale that is potentially ridiculous, all you have are the characters to ground the story, making even the most preposterous feel emotionally true.

I want you to take a few moments to try and remember how you felt when you first viewed 1985's “Back To The Future.” In addition to the great concept, special effects, action, comedy and adventure, what mattered most and what made the entire proceedings so memorable was the devotion Director/Co-Writer Robert Zemeckis and his writing partner Bob Gale paid to their characters. Having Marty McFly travel into his parents’ own adolescence and affect history to the point where his own existence rested in one fateful kiss at the “Enchantment Under The Sea” dance was the film’s beating heart. The two subsequent installments continued to focus on the McFly family but we also had the pleasure of seeing the growing love and friendship between Marty and Doc Brown. All of the wizardry, especially during the dizzying second film, consistently took a back seat to the air-tight plotting and attention to the characters.

I would also offer 2006’s “The Lake House,” whose love story consisted of Keanu Reeves in 2004 and Sandra Bullock in 2006, communicating and falling in love via a series of letters that gather inside of a magical mailbox. This film would have been entirely ridiculous if not for the classy performances and elegant depiction of two souls finding a connection.

Probably the best current example of utilizing sheer humanity in a story fraught with time travel is television’s “Lost.” This program has given viewers an increasingly dense and complicated time traveling narrative that once had roughly half of its characters surviving in 1977 and completely influencing the events that they, and the cast’s other half, were continuing to experience in 2007. For the series’ current and final season, viewers are now subjected to a narrative set in alternate timelines and parallel universes. Yet what makes viewers like myself not throw our remotes into the face of the television screens is the nearly Dickensian attention to the lives and histories of the characters and how they relate to the show’s grand themes of loss, regret, fate, consequences, and the eternal struggle between faith and reason.

And somehow, someway, “The Time Traveler’s Wife” botches every single attempt it has to make an effective drama. Granted, Eric Bana does a great job in the role of Henry. He possesses a haunted and hunted quality that serves and represents Henry effectively. The extraordinary sadness of this character does come across as his jaunts through time and space relinquish his ability to ever fully live within any moment, as they will invariably end without warning. He is a man in a constant state of displacement and Bana found the right notes to make this character real.

However, Rachel McAdams, a lovely actress I have liked quite a bit, from the great “Mean Girls” (2004), “Red Eye” (2005), “Wedding Crashers” (2005), and last year’s “Sherlock Holmes” is sadly weak and unconvincing in the role of Claire. She sucks all of the tragedy and epic nature of this romance out of the movie by treating every obstacle as some sort of schoolgirl infraction upon herself. She’s played as nothing more than a petulant teenager, even into adulthood, and her frustrations feel terribly narcissistic, selfish and nowhere near as aching as Claire is written in the novel. The ways McAdams plays her scenes also robs the character of any empathy. I mean, here is Henry faced with involuntarily sailing through time. He is forced to either repeatedly view the violent car crash death of his Mother, wistfully nurse his intense love and attraction for a teen aged Claire, or fly into the future to have conversations with the daughter he may not live to see and McAdams acts in an annoyed fashion, as if he absentmindedly forgot to call home and inform her of his lateness. In this movie, she is not defined fully as a character in her own right, therefore her pain is rendered nearly invisible leaving McAdams nothing to play but being cross and pouty.

Worst of all, Bana and McAdams have no chemistry whatsoever. I never believed they were a couple, let alone two people this passionately in love and it left me with nothing. Yet, it was not entirely McAdams’ fault…

In addition to Schwentke’s inept direction, I will spread the blame to screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin. This is a writer who just should have known better as he has specialized in films dealing with variations of love stories set within the paranormal and the hereafter. With “Ghost” (1990), the deeply disturbing “Jacob’s Ladder” (1990) as well as his sole directorial effort, “My Life” (1993) which starred Michael Keaton as a dying man videotaping messages to his unborn child, Rubin focused so strongly on character and ultimately crafted deeply complex and emotional stories. With his adaptation of “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” he and Schwentke botch even the simplest details, like firmly informing the audience of what year the story is occurring. Where the novel attaches dates to every single section, the film assigns no dates to any section leaving only the grayness (or lack thereof) of Bana’s hair as the tell-tale sign. Beyond that, it introduces but never fully grasps the novel’s darker themes of Henry’s impending mortality, the dangers of passing on his genes to any potential children, and other very grim elements as if Schwentke and Rubin could not bear to venture as far as the novel for fear of alienating the mass audience that read the book in the first place.

Also, there are at least two or three moments in the film that maybe just worked better on the page or perhaps should have worked better as something more internal. What is presented visually is sometimes just silly and at other times, just creepy. For the initial sequence in the meadow, when a naked Henry (behind a bush) accosts the six year old Claire and another sequence, set on Chicago “L” train where an adult Henry attempts to make a connection with his Mother, who perished when Henry was six, there was no sense of yearning in any possible way. In fact, I couldn’t help but to wonder why no one was calling 9-1-1!

Admittedly, the version I saw in my head and heart was not the film I saw. The one in my head was longer, darker, and definitely R rated rather than the under two-hour, sanitized PG 13 version presented here. Everything was scrubbed clean, incoherent, and terminally shallow and by the film’s end, I knew I had seen one of 2009’s worst films.