silva rerum

Stand still, yet we will make him run

Today I went to watch The Time Traveler’s Wife with A, L and D. Going into the movie, I had fairly low expect­a­tions (sig­ni­fic­antly affected by the mostly neg­at­ive reviews of the movie) so when the movie man­aged to tug on my heartstrings a little, I was pleased. Here’s the lowdown:

Based on the premise of The Time Traveler’s Wife, a Chicago lib­rar­ian (Bana) has a genetic dis­order that causes him to time travel when he is stressed. Though he often dis­ap­pears from her life for long peri­ods of time, he tries to build a romantic rela­tion­ship with Clare Abshire, an artist (McAdams).¹

To be truth­ful, I wasn’t entirely impressed by the book (even though my cash­ier had assured me it was one of the best she had ever read). The style is emo­tional but not enga­ging enough to pro­duce the per­func­tory will­ing sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief neces­sary needed to enjoy the novel for its lit­er­ary mer­its, in spite of the logical con­straints. And I’m also not ter­ribly emo­tional any­way so an appeal to pathos doesn’t sit well with me. This all meant, of course, that I hadn’t expec­ted much from the movie.

Nevertheless, I should have real­ised that noth­ing – noth­ing – could pos­sibly have been as bad as what I had been as bad as what I had expec­ted. McAdams gave a fairly genu­ine per­form­ance, even if she was a bit overly cheery or overly dra­matic at moments. Bana per­formed suit­ably, if woodenly, as Henry DeTamble. I was dis­ap­poin­ted, how­ever, with the rampant exclu­sion of the subtle events in the novel that made it so charming.

The movie could have been bet­ter than this but it was still a good try any­way. Not liv­ing up to the hype is very dif­fer­ent than say­ing it was a bad movie over­all and I wouldn’t be so cruel as to con­demn the movie as the latter.

After the movie, we headed to La Casa Gelato for some dessert. After sampling sev­eral unpal­at­able fla­vours (I was feel­ing adven­tur­ous so I tried the gor­gonzola!), we mostly resor­ted to sure­fire bets – I paired chocol­ate brownie with rasp­berry sorbetto. It was great!

Good day over­all, glad for the res­pite from the mono­tony. I have to be more wary of fall­ing into a regi­men­ted life­style. Must remem­ber to loosen up from time to time.