Film Review: “About Time” – Directed by Richard Curtis
Time travel. In films today, such a topic is usually connected with CGI special effects and a dystopian future or an abuse of the power to travel back through time for devious purposes.
Tell me, if I told you that a movie is about a 21-year old guy who is told by his father that he can travel back in time to any point in his past and change what happened, would you not think, “Premise for an ‘80s teen sexploitation flick”?
Or at least you’d think, “Groundhog Day,” where Bill Murray’s sleazy character uses his repeating day to manipulate people and situations until he finally realizes that his initial lust for the woman he’s been trying to bed had become genuine love.
So, here I am watching what might become something that I will be very uncomfortable with. But I’ve been told I should not worry, that this is a romantic comedy written and directed by Richard Curtis, who used to write for British TV comedies like “Black Adder,” “Mr. Bean” and “The Vicar of Dibley” and wrote such rom-coms as “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” and “Love Actually” (he also directed “Love Actually,” as he does here).
So I was hopeful for a light British romantic comedy. But how will a romantic-comedy writer and director handle the concept of sci-fi time travel? Well, if truth be told, the “science” part of the science-fiction has a few holes in it. But as the movie progresses, I found myself suspending my criticisms because the film just sucked me into the lives of the characters. What I though would be a light British romantic comedy actually became a profound story that I will not easily forget.
The film begins with Tim (played wonderfully by Domhnall Gleeson) being told by his eccentric father (Bill Nighy) that the men in his family have the ability to travel back in time. All he has to do is find a dark place, clench his fists and imagine the moment to which he wants to return, and there he will be. The dorky redhead thinks to himself that this might finally be the trick to getting himself a girlfriend. But his first attempt fails miserably as he tries to woo the beautiful friend of his sister that visits his rich family’s estate that summer.
He goes off to London to become a lawyer, and he meets the love of his life, Mary (the amazing Rachel McAdams). But because he wants to help his playwright roommate overcome an abysmal opening show, he loses her when the timeline had shifted. He finally finds her and uses his power of time travel to say just the right things to win her back. Because of the sincerity of Gleeson’s portrayal of Tim, we don’t question the morality of such a manipulation of her. We know that these two are really meant to be together.
This is the first thing that’s refreshing and moving about this movie: Tim never really uses his unique power for devious purposes. Even with his foibles, he has an ingrained sense of right and wrong, a morality that we learn comes from his family, especially his relationship with his father. There is a moment in the movie where Tim is tempted to sleep with that very same beautiful girl who had turned him down before. We all know that he can do it, and do it again and again, and then go back and not do it and it will be as if it never happened. But he doesn’t do that. Instead he runs back to his love, Mary, and asks her to marry him. The love between McAdam’s Mary and Gleeson’s Tim is as authentic as I’ve ever seen on screen.
The second thing that moved me: Tim says, “And so (my Dad) told me his secret formula for happiness. Part one of the two part plan was that I should just get on with ordinary life, living it day by day, like anyone else… But then came part two of Dad’s plan. He told me to live every day again almost exactly the same. The first time with all the tensions and worries that stop us noticing how sweet the world can be, but the second time noticing.” As I watched Tim relive days without the stresses that so easily overcome and burden us, taking the time to notice the marvels of the human lives around him, I thought, “Why can’t I live more like that?”
The third thing that moved me: Tim’s relationship with his father. As I watched the genuine love in this family, and especially between this funny, caring father and his funny, caring red-headed son, I could not help but think of my relationship with my Dad. I treasure all the time I’ve had with him. And I’ve also squandered opportunities to have more of those times. When Tim’s Dad is diagnosed with cancer, it hit home as my father is now in his late 70s and has outlived most of his doctors’ prognoses for him due to his bad heart. To see the redhead boy play table tennis and frolic in the surf with his dad made me cry out loud.
The last thing that moved me: At the end of the movie, after the highs and lows of love and death, marriages and funerals, alcoholism and babies, Tim says, “And in the end I think I’ve learned the final lesson from my travels in time; and I’ve even gone one step further than my father did: The truth is I now don’t travel back at all, not even for the day, I just try to live every day as if I’ve deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.”
Yes. And amen.
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About Time. Rated R for language and some sexual content.
Trailer:
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