In The Time Traveller’s Wife, in which she plays the title role, the issue is time.
Her true love, Henry (Eric Bana), is afflicted by a rare genetic abnormality that causes him to abruptly leave the present tense for eras unknown, returning who knows when and in what kind of shape.
In a sense, The Time Traveller’s Wife is about men who leave, which doesn’t make it particularly novel. But in another sense, the difficulties of being Henry and Clare serve as a metaphor for the obstacles to love that pop up in every relationship.
And just as every woman seemed to find her own mother in The Joy Luck Club, every lover will find a commonality with The Time Traveller’s Wife. It will worm its way into the hearts of anyone vulnerable to stories about ill-fated romance and star-crossed love.
What makes the movie work is an unhesitating emotional commitment on the part of the actors.
To their credit, Bana and McAdams give it their all, regardless of plausibility, never wavering from the plot at hand and delivering the dramatic, on what might have easily been a comedy.
Not that the circumstances aren’t grim. When we first meet Henry, his mother is being killed in a car crash from which he has miraculously been snatched by his genetic quirk.
We meet Clare as she’s meeting a considerably older Henry after he’s dropped into the shrubbery around the meadow where she lives, in need of a sympathetic ear and some pants. Henry is swept out of his clothes and deposited naked in each time period he visits, providing many of the movie’s situational giggles.
Clare falls in love with Henry, of course, but has to wait to meet him when they are both of a similar age.
The Time Traveller’s Wife is as pure as the driven mush. And so, from a marketing perspective, it’s a chick flick disguised as science fiction, which presumably will mean women will persuade men to go see it.
There seems no question that tears will flow and hankies will get a work out. The mind may boggle at the inconsistencies and logistical impossibilities posed by all of Henry’s disappearances and tampering with the past, but suspend belief for the duration of this film and you may just get swept away.
– Scotty Moorhead
