Written by Linda
February 12, 2010
I'm one of the millions of readers who loved Audrey Niffenegger's book The Time Traveler's Wife. With it's unusual time-hopping premise combined with a love story against all odds, the book had me weeping by the conclusion. But I really couldn't see how it could be made into a movie, without losing the unique magic of the storytelling. Well, they tried.
The central conceit of the story is a typical one: two star-crossed lovers are destined to be together, regardless of the obstacles in their way. What is strange about the story of Claire (Rachel McAdams) and Henry (Eric Bana) is that darn rift in the space/time continuum keeps the two overlapping at random points in their own lives. Claire's life is linear, like most of us. Her destiny goes from point A to point B. Henry's is a little more complex. He has a linear life, but the problem is that he keeps getting pulled from it and thrown into a different time in his own life, as himself. So present Henry may end up in the past, or may end up in the future. He can even cross paths with his linear self (on purpose or by accident). This sometimes is alarming to one of the Henrys... other times, they chat like brothers that are in on the conspiracy of their own secret.
The love story starts when Claire is a child and meets adult time-traveling Henry from the future. Future Henry already knows and loves Claire, and young Claire grows to love visits from Future Henry (throwing a vaguely creepy man-loves-girl twist to the early events). Claire finally meets Linear Henry in college, and she already knows and loves him, but for Linear Henry, it is the first time he has laid eyes on this girl who acts overly-familiar. But heck, she's cute, he's cute, and next thing you know they are passionately in love in the present. But time travel can make a mess of things, and Present Henry finds out things about his future that may mess up their happy, complicated lives.
It is hard not to compare the film to the book. In the DVD extras, director Robert Schwentke explained that they had to simplify the characters in order for the audience to visually keep track. Rather than the myriad Henrys in the book, the film only has Young Henry (longer hair) and Older Henry (with a dash of gray). Other than those minor visual clues, the problem is that 20-year-old Eric Bana pretty much looks exactly the same as 40-year-old Eric Bana. And Rachel McAdams looks the same throughout the whole movie. Hmmm.
Despite the dumbing-down of the story (and the removal of some crucial, emotionally wrenching moments from the book), Bana and McAdams have a passable chemistry as lovers. The stripped-down cinematic version still managed to wring some tears me, as well—though nothing near my messy sobbing at the end of the book. Is it a disappointing adaptation? Yes, a bit. But at the same time, I admire the filmmakers for trying, as I was one of the many who thought that the book was unfilmable.
