The harder you try to make sense of it, the worse it gets. So in addition to the standard suspension of disbelief inherent in watching any film, you have to decide in advance that you’re just not going to sit there and argue with the premise, or else it will be impossible to enjoy the story at any level.
Having said that, “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is still uneven. There are places that drag. Though it’s all about relationships, some relationships are left curiously dangling or irritatingly underdeveloped. It’s unabashedly sentimental, sometimes sloppily so. But there are a couple of really endearing aspects, as well.
First of all, like the recent “Julia and Julie,” it plays against Hollywood type by celebrating the strong marriage. Most of the time, Hollywood is much more interested in the new romance, or the illicit affair, or at best, serial monogamy, carelessly interspersed with flagrant debauchery. Here is an unabashed view of one relationship so strong that it’s practically predestined. And when there’s natural stress and strain in the course of everyday living, and changing circumstances, it’s never an option to leave. You fight through it, you struggle with it, you endure your own disappointment, but you don’t give up on each other. Even in a weird, offbeat time-traveling scenario, it’s still nice to see Hollywood allowing for an ideal, even if it is mushy.
But there’s another, more subtle, even theological, aspect to this modern tale of ancient time travelers. Christians admittedly have an ill-formed view of what the afterlife will be like (if you don’t believe that, try asking the same resurrection question of self-professed, practicing believers and see how many different answers you get.) The Scriptures are frustratingly vague, cryptically metaphoric, and remarkably nonspecific about the particulars of eternal life (if you don’t believe that, try searching the Bible for yourself.) n this film, joyfully jumping between this life and the next, you get the glimpse of glad reunion, the hint of loving relationships expanding to an even higher level, and the unexplainable but universal expectation of time and space no longer being limitations. Instant travel. Personal encounters just by envisioning them. And that significant other, wordlessly longed for if not exactly unattainable perfection, is at the very least, an idealized version of themselves. It is what we would all want for ourselves, should we ever actually live in to our unspoken expectations of what awaits us “in the sweet bye and bye.
So don’t expect logical rationality, either about the time travel or the spanning of life and death, as if that apparent division is more transparent, and more easily traversable than we think. In watching “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” you get to see what you can only imagine. And mercy me, that’s kinda fun.
RONALD P. SALFEN is pastor of Grace Church in Greenville, Texas.
