Can’t tell whether you are coming or going
The Time Traveler’s Wife:
Ruwini JAYAWARDANA
Eric Bana as Henry |
Rachel McAdams as Clare |
There are some novels which simply cannot be made into a film.
Adapting Audrey Niffenegger’s wonderfully complex novel The Time
Traveler’s Wife could not have been easy but Robert Schwentke and his
team had dished out a considerably tolerable version of the tale. The
lifelong romance between Clare and Henry begins at the age of six when
Henry experiences the horror of his mother’s death and time travels for
the first time.
Later we see him approaching Clare when she was a little girl, and
introducing himself to her for the first time. The two form an instance
bond and in later years she becomes his wife.
One of the drawbacks of Schwentke’s movie is that a viewer who is not
be familiar with Niffenegger’s original text may take time to pick up
the pieces of the plot. There are times when he or she may not
understand some of the incidents in the tale at all. Henry’s habit of
jumping randomly to the past and future is enough to perplex even those
who know the story. The fact that he shows up somewhere buck naked out
of the blue contributes to the viewer’s bafflement and complicates his
relationship with Clare.
Henry and Clare |
Another minus point is that the reason for Henry’s constant time
traveling is not given much screen space in the movie expect for a few
chitchat lines about genetics. The latter part of Niffenegger’s novel
deals with this topic in a wider scale while the film hastily touches
upon it and makes more room for the romance between the lead pair. It is
also unclear why Henry keeps on being drawn to Clare at different
periods of her life. At the same time a good reason is not given on why
Henry cannot make use of his ability to save his mother from the
automobile accident. There is nothing to suggest that he cannot make use
of his gift as he does take advantage of it by winning the lottery to
buy Clare their dream home. Such loopholes and absence of logic puzzle
the audience and lets Niffenegger’s bestseller down.
One of the worst crimes that a director could do to an adaptation is
to change its concluding scene. This we have witnessed in movies like
‘My Sister’s Keeper’ which had a less heart-tugging climax than Jodi
Picoult’s masterpiece. The same has been done to Niffenegger’s work. The
scene indicates that Clare did not have to wait long to see Henry for
the last time while the book reveals that Clare waited decades,
stretching onto her twilight years, to catch one last heart-stopping
glimpse of her husband. Such an alteration tones down the emotional
impact on the audience.
Hunky Eric Bana and the lovely Rachel McAdams make a striking pair
though they lack chemistry in each other’s arms. However their
individual acting skills keep the film from falling apart. They come up
winners with their soulful stares and the emotional struggles they
undergo during certain circumstances such as Clare in her miscarriages
and Henry after getting a vasectomy.
The Time Traveler’s Wife is about romance in every sense: its
enduring qualities and ability to transcend time and space. However just
like Bana’s Henry, the audience too does not know if they are coming or
going in most instances of this adaptation. It needs much improvement to
be on par with the elegance of the 2003 novel. |