[FILM] The Time Traveller's Wife

[tamaranth]

The Time Traveller's Wife (IMDB)

My distinction between 'film based on the book' and 'film of the book' stands: this is the former.

I liked it much more than I'd expected: it's not nearly as dark as the book, and by necessity it skims most of the novel's plot in favour of focussing on the marriage / pregnancy aspects. Just as IMDB says, it's a romantic drama with SF elements. And it made me reread the book (I'd forgotten a lot, including the poetry of Niffenegger's writing) to work out how much had been omitted: a lot.



The book has much more about Henry: the movie focusses on Clare and on their relationship. He's seldom alone or with former / future selves.

Also, the film plays down the slightly dodgy aspects of the relationship between adult Henry and child Clare.

It does simplify the plot, but I think that's necessary in a film this length aimed at an audience who haven't read the book*.

Good things:
- Eric Bana, acting
- the band at the wedding (who turn out to be Broken Social Scene) doing a very slow, laid-back version of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'
- the disappearance effect
- the cinematography, especially the handprint in steam
- the way Henry's always outside, looking in

Less good:
- little sense of zeitgeist -- all the different periods looked the same
- omission of some key aspects (TV as a trigger; Calre's family background; various people's sense of recognition)
- lessened impact of bowdlerised nasties (e.g. Henry's frostbite)
- missing out all the punk / music / alternative scene / art
--- soundtrack could have been so much better if it'd been Henry's music
- rather too much getting-dressed-and-instantly-disappearing
- Clare's much more fatalistic than she is in the book

Awful:
- last five minutes (much much more positive than the novel, and nauseatingly trite)

I liked it as a film, I'd see it again, but it does not have an exact relation to the book.

*(Thought: are there films that rely on a knowledge of their text? I'm thinking Sin City, maybe the first Harry Potter film, probably the various Shakespeare-based productions. Buy me beer and get me talking about how Alternate Universes only work in fanfiction Transformative Works -- then drop in the version of The Revengers' Tragedy with Eddie Izzard ...)

Comments

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

Ah, I'd already more or less decided not to bother, but if they've missed out all the good music I'm now even less inclined to see it. I shall just read the book again instead (when I eventually unpack my books!).

Wrong icon! Should maybe have been a film icon anyway. Hmm.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I liked it, but it's not identical to the book. (Then again, your mileage tends to vary from mine!)

[nils.livejournal.com]

I suspect Dune works much better if you've read the book.

I saw Sin City without having read the comic. It seemed to make sense (but as I was watching it at the dentist, I probably wasn't giving it my full attention... ;-)

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I ever saw Dune all the way through. I did see Sin City without much knowledge of the comic, and I could tell there was a layer of meaning / plot / something that I wasn't getting. (Possibly like Watchmen, where I did know the comic and picked up on a lot of the visual echoes and off-screen subtext.)

[nils.livejournal.com]

I think I saw Dune before reading the book, but any lack of understanding might have just been down to having it interrupted by commercials every fifteen minutes. And possibly missing the start...

There's certainly a lot of stuff in Watchmen that you'll only pick up on if you've read the comic, but I think that's mostly background stuff. I think it's possible to add minor stuff that fans will notice/ enjoy, without making reading the book first a requirement...

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

much much more positive than the novel

*raises eyebrow*

Care to substantiate that? It's not what I took away, I have to say.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Certainly, for values of 'positive' including 'empty in a Hollywood kind of way':

- the novel ends with Clare still waiting, the only thing she's waiting for is Henry, he's still the sole focus of her life.
- the film ends with 'let's get on with our lives, Henry is still with us death is just a curtain all time is simultaneous he'll be baaaaack'

personally I find the former much more satisfying, because the book's a tragedy. But I can see how the Hollywood 'grieve and move on' thing works for the film.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Er, how does the film not end with Clare always waiting for Henry? The only difference is that it's implicit, rather than explicit; but she has no guaranteet that she'll ever see him again, and that one visit has ensured that she will always wonder if he might reappear.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

It does end with her waiting -- I don't think there's any way it could not end with that, even if Henry'd said this was absolutely the last time, because Clare has devoted her life to waiting for him -- but the film loses the sense of 'just one more visit', and emphasises that life is going on: she's not just sitting alone in a room, but rather she's at her parents' house with her daughter and her friends' children. And she's confident (despite lack of guarantee either way) that she (and Alba) will see Henry again and again, because of how time is a river, or something.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I disagree: that seemed to me bravado, not confidence. The rest of the film establishes Henry's appearances as uncertain, so it's impossible to believe in certainty at the end. If anything I found it more insidious than the book's ending, which was a blunt instrument.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

On a slightly different tack, I felt the film again, by having to reify stuff that in the book makes sense as just text - again turns tragedy into farce at the point of Henry's death - if you knew someone was going to shoot you tonigt and you'd end up on the floor bleeding out, wouldn't you at least atrrange to have a paramedic team to hand, just in case??

But what I completeky object to is the film's excision of the fairly clear hint in the book (I think) that Henry is drawn to Clara's house again and again because it
s WHERE HE DIES - not the opposite way around.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

if you knew someone was going to shoot you tonigt and you'd end up on the floor bleeding out, wouldn't you at least atrrange to have a paramedic team to hand, just in case??

Not if you knew you died that night. (More fatalism!)

I don't think the meadow/death hint is excised from the film, because the scenes are shot pretty specifically from the same point (I can't remember if the film includes the scene where Clare hears Henry calling and rushes out and sees him + brother + Mark ... problem with doing film + book in just over 12 hours!).

But there is a line in the book that devastated me this time round, and would make no sense in the bowdlerised version of the film:
"If anything ever happens to my feet you might as well shoot me."

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Well yes - wasn't disagreeing with you on the bowdlerisation. 12A huh?

But re fatalism - I don't think the original characters *behaved* fatalistically (and if so C more than H) even if they accepted it intellectually. The book has narrative drive,in spades in fact. And I think every human struggles to the max against their death. I'd need to reread the book though. And as I say there's just something about SEEING scenes as oposed to reading them which to me is infinitely less convincing. I'm really not sure this should have been filmed at all - or as I suggested in my review , at least non naturalistically, as in eg Fight Club.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I'll definitely agree with 'insidious', but not with 'bravado'. (Though there may be a certain amount of jollying-along for Alba's sake.)

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Heavens I feel like you saw a whole different movie - so many of my responses are directly opposite. I thought the dodgy aspects of Henry/child Clara were so much *more* obvious in the film than the book (tho possibly not deliberately just because film IS so much more obvious than text) that it was really quite morally difficult to watch. Instead of asking her to come back time and again why didn';t he just tell her to go away? It really looks like grooming to me now whereas I felt that was an unfair crit of the book.

I also thought Eric Bana's acting was pretty rote and the disappearance effect was laughable.

However I agree that Love Will Tear Us Apart was a pleadant surprise tho quite honestly I can't see ANYONE picking that as first dance at their wedding!

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

The 'grooming' thing doesn't bother me as much from Henry's point of view, because (a) it's all already happened in his timeline and he's been told about it, exhaustively, by Clare; (b) he's already said time and again that it's impossible for him to change anything; (c) he doesn't tell her anything about their future together, even when she fishes about wishing he was married to her.

From Clare's point of view, it feels fatalistic: she grows up with an imaginary friend and falls in love with him and determines to find and marry him. IN the film she complains about never having a choice but she has more of a choice than Henry, who's being told that that's what happened, full stop.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I don't think the fatalism thing stops him having to be seen morally not to deliberately reel Clara in as a confidant again and again. I just found it squicky whereas in the book, I didn't notice at all it was essentially a grooming situation till someone pointed it out.

Clara's fatalism does seem stepped up in the movie - maybe to get round this? In fact I hardly recognise this Clara - hausfrau and nag. You wouldn't know she was an artist if the script didn't tell you.