Paradoxical pleasure from Time Traveler's Wife

 

On a par with such time travel/romance classics as “Somewhere in Time” and “Time After Time,” “The Time Traveler's Wife” is a heartfelt patch cut from the same cloth.

Eric Bana plays Henry, a man who can go back and forth through time like we do to the local Ralph's market, a blessing and a curse as he can't control when and where he goes, or when he'll return, and his clothes don't go with him when he disappears.

He meets Clare (Rachel McAdams), a woman who obviously knows him, and he begins to realize that he's met her, spent time with her, in her past, by way of one of his future jaunts in time.

Don't worry, the film isn't half as confusing as trying to explain it. In Director Robert Schwentke capable hands, ably assisted by some atmospheric cinematography by Florian Ballhaus, we have a film-- that could've been a confusing mess of flashbacks, flash-forwards, and flash-sideways--forged into an instant classic.
This deeply involving saga of a man afflicted with a condition that causes endless hardship, like watching but being unable to save his doomed mother, but also certain advantages, like winning big time in the state lottery using a touch of prior knowledge of events.

The brilliant thing about the message of the film is that it paints the same “you can't fight destiny” picture on a new canvas of imagination and provocative emotional investment. You buy the love story. You buy the time travel. You buy into this couple, and the unreal becomes far too real.

Bana is as good as I've ever seen him as the tortured yet ultimately accepting time traveler, and McAdams is a perfect counterpart to him as the woman who waits, and waits, and waits for his safe return. Stephen Tobolowsky, one of my all time favorite character actors, lends his skills to the thankless role of the geneticist who tries to help Henry resolve or at least contain his problem. Other performances of note are delivered by the little girl contingent of the film: Brooklynn Proulx as the younger version of Clare shines with a resounding on-screen brightness, and real life sisters Hailey and Tatum McCann are pleasingly natural in the role they share as the younger and older versions of Alba, the time traveler's daughter... Perhaps a good title for a possible sequel?

This is the kind of sweet, sentimental epic that might have left you feeling hopeless, but instead leaves you with the hope in living we all share. A love story that accentuates that our only sure immortality is how we live on in the memories and feelings of those whose lives we've touched along the way, “The Time Traveler's Wife” is a wonderful time at the movies.