If a creative mind cannot tap time travel as a bountiful subject, he or she
is challenged. So, there has been a raft of movies.
Roger Ebert pointed out there's a fundamental problem in such story lines.
Time travel presents unavoidable problems of logic. If one could go back in time
and tamper with the past, it would affect the present. Michael Crichton tried
tackling that obstacle. The probing mind of the late author suggested maybe
we're living in just one of many dimensions. There's a dimension in which the
Nazis won World War II. Time travel might just involve skipping through
dimensions.
Crichton also suggested that altering history isn't as easy as one might
think. The reason is that the major forces of history are just too strong. A
single individual waving his arms and imploring about something would be
inconsequential. We wait to find out the hard way where the future is taking us.
The futuristic visions presented by world's fairs of the early 20th Century
are merely amusing. Cars are simply more streamlined. Skyscrapers are taller.
There is no true grasp of what is to come. When the "Back to the Future" movie
series shot into the future, all we saw was a fancier or "jazzed up" version of
when the movie was made. Sorry, that's the best we can do. We saw flying cars in
"The Jetsons," and robot maids, but nothing like Facebook.
I had a college professor whose "claim to fame," as it were, was predicting
how tech would impact us. He wrote an original chapter in a book that was
otherwise edited from other sources. His thesis: tech inroads would create
immense leisure for us. So much leisure, in fact, that adjusting to it would
become a prime societal challenge. We should be so fortunate! I'll applaud this
guy because he meant the best for us. His last name was Ryan.
In reality, we have become a caffeinated, obsessed sea of souls who cannot
seem to complete our assigned tasks.
The hippie movement made an attempt to jettison us into the kind of world
foreseen by Mr. Ryan. It was an ill-fated venture. The boomers who once talked
about "dropping out," inspired by Timothy Leary, have now become like Norm
Coleman. Politician Coleman was once an anti-war activist with superfluous locks
of hair. Today he's an anti-tax tea party-ish straight-laced Republican. We
adjust to circumstances. There's a zeitgeist.
Was the 2008 "economic slowdown" just a mild tremor, a precursor as it
were? Have we just been buying time since then? Have our leaders just found ways
to forestall the pain or crisis? If the crisis arrives, we will no longer put
stock in the stock market. Our society will go through convulsions and we'll
eventually arrive at a new normal. History is full of various ebbs and flows.
They just can't be predicted.
Time travel movies toy with our thoughts about this. They can only be
speculative in the way of those old world's fairs.
"An Angel for May" (2002)
My favorite time travel movie is one that doesn't show up on the lists of
"bests." It never broke out from obscurity. It's one of those hidden gems of
cinema. It's called "An Angel for May." It's based on the well-received novel of
the same name by Melvin Burgess. I found the VHS tape in one of those discount
baskets at a big box store several years ago. It seemed intriguing.
I had been captivated by this genre of movies by the George Pal classic
"The Time Machine," based on the H.G. Wells novel.
We see two troubled children in "An Angel for May." The girl is in the
1940s and has been orphaned by war. Stuck in rubble for a long time, "May" has
PTSD. Then we have "Tom," the lead character of the movie, whose troubles are in
the present. They seem minor compared to war. But they're very real to Tom whose
mother is considering re-marrying after an uncomfortable breakup with her first
husband. The discord is unnerving to the impressionable Tom. The 12-year-old
becomes lost in his own discontent. Time travel becomes a tool for him to be
more outwardly-directed, to find fulfillment in caring about others, across
generations.
The story takes place in Yorkshire, England. There are striking scenes of
rows of wind turbines.
"An Angel for May" might be considered a dog movie. An apparently stray dog
named "Tess" gets Tom's attention. Tess is a border collie. We don't see that
much of Tess in the movie, but the canine is instrumental to the plot.
The dog attracts Tom to an abandoned farmsite as storm clouds approach. Tom
falls through a stone wall that takes him back to 1941. "May" befriends him. She
has been taken in by a wholesome farm family. Challenges await. And peril.
German bombers pass overhead in one scene, jettisoning bombs from an abortive
raid. The two children come to see they are kindred spirits. Their company is
healthy for each other.
At the end, Tom is able to do something with his asthma relief device to
alter the future of the principals around May. Tom's final time trip is from the
past to the present. This time the stone wall wasn't involved. Rather it's a
blow to the head caused by a falling beam. He awakens in a hospital, his
concerned mother present. We wonder if the whole story of May might have been
some sort of hallucination caused by blacking out. Of course we want to believe
otherwise, that Tom was transformed by his experience of being thrust into
crisis and realizing how important it can be for all of us to rely on each
other.
Tom is content at the end, even accepting the new father-to-be, "a nice
enough bloke," to use his words.
Matthew Beard plays the role of "Tom." Charlotte Wakefield is "May." The
movie might have some pacing issues. Also, I had to watch it more than once to
accurately place all characters, especially Alison who I learn is the adult
daughter of the farm owner. Alison, who wears a military type of uniform,
discovers May in the rubble.
Time travel movies are many and various. I liked Kirk Douglas in "The Final
Countdown." I liked the movie based on the Crichton book "Timeline." Critics
were cool on "Timeline" and I thought that unfortunate. It could have been the
start of a franchise of movies. Different time periods could be explored. Alas,
Crichton with his genius wasn't able to inspire such a franchise as he had with
"Jurassic Park."
We all ponder what we might do if we went back in time. We might make a
different choice at a certain juncture. But we wouldn't be able to stop Pearl
Harbor.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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