This just in:
Apparently the Niffenegger gravy-train has not yet pulled into the last station.
@Bookgirl96 on Twitter made my day today by posting a link to this article about the plan to turn The Time Traveler’s Wife into a weekly series!!!
No word in the article about possible cast members, but I’m really excited that the series might address some of the issues I had with the movie.
Keep y’all posted on anything new I hear. Thanks BookGirl96!
PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK. AVERT YOUR EYES!
Abandon hope all ye who enter here…
*****
*****
Theatrical Poster
Okay. There. SuperMegaSpoiler Buffer Zone.
So, when I first heard The Time Traveler’s Wife was being made into a movie, the first thought that occurred to me was “Oh no. They’re going to butcher it.” As with Memoirs of a Geisha, Lolita, and every other movie adapt I’ve seen, there is a tendency to leave out the things that make the book so gripping. I often think the film industry has very little faith in its audience, but that’s a whole other post.
The things the movie got right, it got REALLY right. The visual effects of Henry’s disappearance, the here-and-then-nothing shots with empty mirrors and running water… these work. They show the sheer inconvenience of a life, a body you can never depend upon to be there when you’re counting on it. It does a good job of conveying the frustration of being left behind, of wanting things so badly you can taste them, and yet not being able to grasp.
Clare and Henry were really well played as a romantic couple. You could feel the frustration in a furrowed brow or a heavy sigh, the tender “forgive me” stare of a lover who is walking gingerly, the sense of play they shared in the book.
The settings were lovely. The dingy Chicago streets, the gritty splendor of the Bow Thai, all the grandeur of the Abshire residence were captured with ease. Even Clare’s studio felt as it should have, warm and inviting, a place where order ceased and creativity dwelled. I would have liked to see a little nod to Henry’s “Wings” at some point during the movie, but it was a small thing to miss. Henry’s Flannel shirts were there, the scraggly feel of his stolen and mismatched clothes. The setting and atmosphere translated really well from the page.
While I won’t say that the film anywhere compares to the beauty, the tragedy, or the chemistry of the book, I will say that it was a decent take. There were a few things however ,that speaking from my own experience really robbed the film of the original magic.
1. Henry: Henry was brilliant in the book. A sensitive yet punk-rock man, who loved Rilke as much as the Sex Pistols. What a mix. He was a librarian, the alpha-nerd who rattles off love poetry and revels in the time-worn touch and smell of the special collections gallery. He could also cuss you out and kick your ass and pick a lock in ten seconds flat. While for obvious reasons the lock-picking remained, the romance of Henry was left out of translation and supplanted by the GQ-friendly face of Eric Bana. Eric made a suitable Henry, but the movie gave us a total of 30 seconds of Henry as the smart, swoon-worthy geek. The signature phrase “Had we but world enough and time…” (Borrowed from Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress”) never even *appears* in the movie. Call it nitpicking, but I missed it.
For the sake of garnering a PG-13 rating, the film shies away from the visceral sexuality of the book. The biggest example of course being the conception of Alba. It is no mistake that this little girl is brought into the world. A traveling version of Henry meets Clare in the street and tells her “Persevere”. The scene in the car with a pre-snip instance of Henry very cleverly supplants the very risque original, Younger Henry and Clare surreptitiously making love in the bed while Linear Timeline Henry snoozes six inches away, blissfully unaware. (I can’t even begin to comment on the inference of a man sleeping through the creation of his first child… call it a modern twist on an urban myth.)
Sex helps Henry stay, as well. I guess they needed him to travel a lot for the sake of a salable movie, because the paltry two or three times they allude to a lovemaking session before turning off the lights and drawing the blinds plays NOTHING like the sheer sexual energy of the book.
Film-makers also softened the blow of Henry’s reality for the viewer, based partially on test-audience reaction to the movie’s original ending. In the book, Henry’s condition eventually costs him both of his feet, and eventually his life. At an hour and three-quarters, the movie is unable to fully translate the deep depression and frustration of Henry’s life as an amputee. His death is played out as a train on a track, Henry the rider waiting to get off at the last stop. The floods of tears that came at Henry’s passing (which incidentally happened for me on a lunch break from work… sitting by my lunch spot at the lake SOBBING like a fool) just didn’t happen at the movie. If I were crying for any reason, it was because that final parting scene was close enough to evoke my original response.
2. Life After Henry: Life after Henry was not business as usual, as the film would have you believe. Clare went on in the world with what Plath would have called a “hole in herself, shaped like the other person.” Henry’s passing consumed her, mired her in sleep and self-pity, and for a time robbed her of her ability to be an artist and a mother. She tried anything and everything to reclaim some grasp on Henry, including a momentary lapse into a strange not-quite-infidelity with Gomez (”I am the time traveler now.” she says as she tries to use Gomez as a placeholder for her beloved husband.) None of this enters into the movie, for fear of tainting the audience’s image of Clare as the Madonna, a sinless woman removed from desire, a martyr. Likewise, moviegoers liked Gomez as the easy comic foil, who never adds to the tension of the plot. In reality, Gomez spends his life burdened by an unexpressed love for Clare, and in his one and only opportunity to indulge it, recoils when he finds that even in death, Clare can’t let go of the man she always loved. The movie doesn’t rock the boat, apparently in an attempt to secure our $12.
The movie makes a screaming dash from Henry’s death to the end of the movie, skipping everything about the ending of the book that made it truly magical. Much like the sweetness of Florentino winning the hand of Fermina Daza at the end of Love in the Time of Cholera, the victory over death experienced when Henry embraces Clare at the end of her life gives us a balm to soothe the heartache of the final chapters of the book. The film foregoes this sweet reward, moving instead to quickly wrap up the story-line in a gee-willikers ending where mother and daughter wander off into the sunset knowing that they’ll get to see Daddy even though he’s gone. It’s saccharine and contrived, and unfortunately it will make the movie sell better in the mainstream.
If you loved the book, buy the movie when it comes out, re-read the book while you’re waiting for the DVD release date. You’ll be spending more quality time with two people you love.
