The Time Traveler’s Wife seems like a story that was written backwards, both literally and metaphorically. The timeline itself jumps all over the place as Eric Bana slips from his past to his future, but the real sense that everything is slightly the wrong way round comes from the fact that the plot is completely secondary and subservient to its love conquering all themes. As a result it doesn’t make a lick of sense, but thematically it’s rather more satisfying.
It was quite a smart idea to get Bruce Joel Rubin to write the screenplay for the adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s bestselling book, as he’s already had a fair amount of success with a romance that endured even the toughest of circumstances, as the screenwriter of Ghost.
Henry (Eric Bana) has a bit of a problem. He suffers from strange genetic condition that causes him to keep jumping backwards and forwards through time. This means that, for example, he can appear naked in some bushes and introduce himself to the six-year-old Clare, explain to her that they’re friends, or at least will be in the future, and ask her to help him get some clothes (the movie is very insistent that Bana should be in the buff as much as possible, due to the fact that his clothes stay behind when his body time-shifts). However when a 20-year-old Clare (now grown into Rachel McAdams) introduces herself to him, he has no idea who she is, because his future self hasn’t yet travelled back in time to meet her at various points in her youth. Got that?
However, despite his odd chronological impairment, Clare and Henry are destined to be with one another, so she must get used to the fact that he involuntarily keeps disappearing from her life, whether it’s while he’s doing the dishes or minutes before they’re due to get married (luckily an older Henry time-travels back in the nick of time and steps in for his younger self).
If you start thinking about the plot for even a second the whole thing is utterly and completely preposterous, riddled with paradoxes and illogical occurrences. As I said it’s written backwards, so that rather than making sense, the plot has to fit the romance and themes, rather than the other way around. The filmmakers try to get around the problems by completely ignoring them and instead ensuring that things keeping moving forwards (and backwards) at a fairly brisk pace, which is probably a more sensible strategy than it sounds. Other than Henry visiting a doctor, who luckily seems to be both a geneticist and an expert in advanced quantum physics, the movie gives short shrift to the whys of the situation.
It means that your enjoyment of the film will rest entirely on whether you can overlook the fact that the story is utterly nonsensical. If you don’t mind its wilful refusal to bow to the pressures of logic, there’s a fairly charming and unabashedly romantic film underneath (as long of you ignore the rather creepy connotations of naked men hiding in bushes and talking to six-year old girls). It’s helped immensely by Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams, who completely give themselves over to their roles; him the charming but frustrated time traveller, her the adoring but long-suffering woman who has to get used to being left behind. Instead of logic, the film is more interested in an incredibly romantic look at how our memories of the past and expectations or the future inform our present. The set-up certainly provides plenty of fodder for testing the limits of love and providing lots of longing, losing and tear-jerking, even if it doesn’t trouble itself with even a passing glance at common sense.
When considering whether to go and watch The Time Traveler’s Wife, you really need to think about how much things making sense matters to you. If you’re prepared to completely put logic on hold (I’m not talking suspension of disbelief here, I mean utter refusal to think about what you’re seeing) and surrender to the romantic melodrama, you’ll probably enjoy the film a lot. If you’re prone to wanting at least some semblance of reason, then avoid this like the plague. Or you can be like me, trying to enjoy the ride and often succeeding, but constantly having to try and quieten the voices in my head protesting about how backwards everything seems to be.
Overall Verdict: There’s a decent romance helped by committed lead performances that emerge from a plot that resolutely refuses to make any concessions to logic or sense.
Reviewer: Tim Isaac