Set in 1980, the film gives us a voyeuristic look into the life of Richard Collier, a successful playwright portrayed by Christopher Reeve (Superman, Deathtrap). Collier goes on an unscheduled getaway prompted by a bout of writer’s block, ending up at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Wandering the hotel, Richard stumbles upon a small museum of hotel artifacts and… this is where the movie really begins. We watch as Richard is drawn— almost against his will— to a photograph that changes his life: A portrait of actress Elise McKenna, played by Jane Seymour (Live and Let Die, Dr. Quinn).

From that moment, Richard is captivated by Ms. McKenna and her Mona Lisa smile. Finding the picture was taken sixty years earlier, Collier goes down a rabbit hole of research. He learns all he can about Elise, each clue deepening his obsession, hinting at an implausible truth: Somehow, in the distant past, the two had known each other. This sets Richard on a quest to see if time travel is possible, as he is determined to achieve it.

( Major SPOILERS ahead )

Locking himself in his room, he dons an early twentieth century suit, and cuts his hair to match. He spends the better part of the day listening to a recording of his own voice, trying to convince himself that it is 1912, the last time Elise McKenna was seen at the hotel. After several hours, he realizes the recording– made with technology that hadn’t existed in 1912– was the very thing preventing him from transporting to the past.

Removing all reminders of the present, Richard again attempts to will himself back in time– and it works. He finds himself in 1912, exactly as he had imagined.

This is a rare moment in movie history, more fairytale than science fiction, where time travel is not achieved via wristwatches or cars or phone booths: It’s more like Dorothy, caught in a tornado, carried off into the Land of Oz.

Collier proceeds to find Elise, overcomes her initial rebuttals, and convinces her of his sincerity of heart. In the span of three days, they go on a horse & carriage ride, share a romantic afternoon in a rowboat (anyone else getting ‘Little Mermaid’ vibes, here?), and bond as only movie lovers can. The only obstacle to their newfound happiness is Elise’s manager, William Robinson, portrayed by Christopher Plummer (Sound of Music, Doctor Parnassus). Regarding himself as her protector, he opposes the match in every way. He even has Collier attacked by thugs. Still, Richard and Elise find their way back to each other, Elise turning her back on her life as an actress, and Robinson.

But just as the couple start to make plans, Collier accidentally pulls something from his pocket that reminds him of the future: A 1979 penny. In one of the most heartbreaking moments I’ve ever seen, Richard is pulled away from his love. In a scene extremely reminiscent of “the sunken place” in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Richard watches Elise fade into the distance, as we’re left with her screams of abject terror.

My Thoughts

Each side of me has her own thoughts. Here are a few:

The Feminist finds Richard’s obsessive desperation insulting: A successful writer, fresh off a breakup, runs from his problems, then promptly fixates on an unobtainable pretty face. Richard essentially time-stalks a dead woman, then applies emotional pressure until she responds the way he’d like. That’s not love. Not a healthy one at least. It’s also ridiculous that she gives up her career and her father figure for a three-day love affair.

The Activist is concerned that there were apparently no Black people in 1980. There didn’t even appear to be any Negro servants in 1912. #Erasure

The Romantic & The Christopher Reeve Fangirl feel like he was the only person that could sell this character on screen. There are moments of such breathtaking sincerity that they make me believe in time travel, magic, and destiny. No one could sell love and heartbreak like Christopher Reeve. Just watch the Lois Lane death scene in Superman: The Movie. But there are also moments of inappropriate camp that jolt me out of the story.

Plummer, as always, is menacing, charming, regal, and believable. Seymour puts in an excellent performance, as well. For me, however, Reeve is the breath and heartbeat of this film.

Yes, this movie is a mixed bag, depending on what values you bring to the viewing, but all in all, I think it is a semi-polished gem: It may not sparkle, but it’s priceless.

Also Read: The Film Fan’s Guide To Time Travel

The post Somewhere In Time: A Tragic Fairytale appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.

Protect The Timeline

We would all do well to remember Abe Simpson’s advice to his son Homer on his wedding day “If you ever travel back in time, don’t step on anything because even the tiniest change can alter the future in ways you can’t imagine.” A dire warning issued to virtually every time traveller is to protect the timeline – do not do anything that will change the present or future. This is explored wonderfully in Back To The Future Part II, Marty buys a sports almanac in the future with the idea of using it to place winning bets in his present. Unfortunately, the almanac winds up in the hands of villain Biff who gives it to his younger self. When Marty returns to his present he finds a very different Hill Valley, beset with crime and corruption in which multi-millionaire Biff essentially runs the town, his mother is married to Biff and his father is dead – later revealed to have been murdered by Biff. The rest of the film is Marty and Doc trying to restore the original timeline by getting the almanac back.

Beware of Paradoxes

There are a number of paradoxes that can beset the unwary time traveller – the most famous being The Grandfather Paradox and the Bootstrap Paradox. The Terminator franchise is a classic example of the Bootstrap Paradox, taking its name from the literal impossibility of a person “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps”. Essentially this is when by going back in time you invent or create something that already existed in your time – meaning its actual moment of creation is lost in a paradox. In The Terminator franchise a war is raging between humans and machines in the distant future (the year 1997), the computers send a killer robot, a Terminator, back in time to kill the mother of the human leader. This terminator is defeated and destroyed…or nearly destroyed, parts of it are salvaged by a company that then go on to create the very computer system fighting humankind. The groundbreaking technology that enabled the creation of artificial intelligence is only possible because that artificial intelligence sent an example of it back in time. Given that there are now six Terminator films as well as a television series the complicated overlapping timelines and paradoxes are essentially nonsensical and any attempt to tell a story has been abandoned.

The setup for The Grandfather Paradox is suitably demonstrated in the Back to the Future trilogy, this time with the first instalment. Marty travels back in time and interrupts the meeting of his parents, thus erasing himself from the timeline. In the film, Marty begins to fade from reality. The paradoxical nature of what he has done is never explored but essentially if Marty erases himself from history then his parents will successfully meet, then he will exist, so he will go back in time, interrupt the meeting and will no longer exist and so on forever. Of course, Back to the Future adds the weird and creepy element of your own mother developing a crush on you, taken to the logical conclusion in Futurama with The Grandmother Paradox – where Fry travels back in time, kills his grandfather and then sleeps with his grandmother, becoming his own grandfather.

The Future Isn’t Necessarily Going To Be Better

In our modern times looking back at the past it can sometimes seem like we’ve be on an almost inevitably upward trajectory of progress – both scientific and social. This is wrong. There is no reason to suppose the future would be better than the present. Few time travel films portray this better than the 1960 classic The Time Machine, based on H.G. Wells’ novel. Setting off from Victorian England the protagonist travels forward in time and while at first he sees the march of science and progress things turn bad, at some point in the 1960s there is a terrible, world-wide calamity, seemingly brought on by humankind itself in which the world is covered in lava. Finally stopping in the far distant future when the lava is gone he finds the Eloi, a group of beautiful people but who seem to understand little of the world and laze around waiting for food to be delivered. The protagonist learns that the Eloi are little more than cattle for the subterranean Morlocks, ugly monstrous creatures but have vastly more intellect. In fact, both the Eloi and the Morlocks are the descendants of the human race, each taking a diverging path. Our future could contain killer robots, a world-ending plague or maybe nothing at all.

Getting Things Right

Time travel offers unique opportunities to get things right the second time around. Action sci-fi blockbuster Edge of Tomorrow (also known as Live. Die. Repeat) starred Tom Cruise as a soldier, Cage, infected by alien blood who travels back in time each time he dies, reliving the same day. This is the alien’s ultimate weapon that allows them to avoid defeat by learning and changing their tactics appropriately. Cage is transformed from manipulative PR coward into a battle-hardened hero by repeatedly dying, slowly getting better. Groundhog Day is one of the best films ever made and while it doesn’t even attempt to look at the science or magic or whatever of time travel, it investigates what it might do to a person. Arrogant and selfish weatherman Phil Connors is trapped in a seemingly endless loop, repeating the same day over and over again. Connors goes through a variety of stages from enjoying the absence of consequences, to using his future knowledge to get money and sex, to becoming suicidal from the never-ending sameness of it all to eventually becoming a better man. What both films show, amongst other things, is that an ability to know the future, even just a few hours, can give you immense powers. To others Cage seems damn near indestructible, knowing where wreckage will fall from the sky or where aliens are hiding to Connors performing perfectly timed bank heists where no one even knows a robbery has been committed or simply getting every answer on Jeopardy. In Edge of Tomorrow Cage dies on screen 24 times, but it is suggested the total is a lot higher. Groundhog Day director Harold Ramis has put out that he thinks Connors was stuck in the same day for somewhere between thirty and forty years.

It is perhaps unlikely any of us will be called upon our knowledge of time travel learned from movies but hopefully, if you are, this will have been a helpful guide.

Also Read: Flashpoint: The Defining Film of the DCEU

The post The Film Fan’s Guide To Time Travel appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.