The Time Traveler's Wife [*Movie Reaction*]

    Watching the film version of The Time Traveler's Wife, I was somewhat disappointed by it. There were a lot of differences portrayed in the movie starting from the beginning that made me realize it wouldn't capture at least half of what the book says. For example, in the beginning of the book, Clare meets Henry in the library after not having seeing him since her eighteenth birthday. However, in the movie, the beginning started off with the death of Henry's mother, and it skipped forwards then backwards on to the scene where Clare and Henry met. There was a sense of chronological events for a bit of the movie, but then it skipped right to when Henry decided to give Clare his mother's wedding and engagement rings.
    Some other details that were slightly different would be the way in which the characters interacted with each other, and added parts that were only casually mentioned in the book. One example would be the date Clare and Henry had after their encounter in the library. In the book, Clare had mentioned a notebook in which Henry wrote down all the dates. However, there wasn't much depth to it, and it was only mentioned at least twice after that. In the movie, through the usage of a crane shot, Clare takes out that notebook and shows it to Henry, but it seems to have a bigger importance for Henry. Something else that was added would have to be the scene where Henry and Clare were in the park discussing how he time travels. Through the medium shot, Henry tells Clare how he ends up in places and how he feels about his time travelling.
   The way the director told the story of the movie was a little bit too different from what the author portrayed. It is understood through the readers that time in the book jumps forward and backward through Henry. However, in the film, the passage of time gets only portrayed forwards. Through camera movement of pan and change of scene examples such as dissolve and fade, viewers of the film see the transformation of Alba from the moment in which she starts of as a baby to the day of her fifth birthday, as well as the scene in which Henry learns he will die. Everything in the movie happens too suddenly, and it only shows the struggles of Henry and Clare as something that will be done with soon, when in the book, it happens more often than expected.
   The ending of the movie was far different than the ending of the book. In the book, through a letter left by Henry after his death, Clare learns that Henry time travelled to the future and saw Clare as an old lady. Also, since another Henry is out in time somewhere, he continues to visit his daughter, but can never visit Clare. In the end, the way Henry sees Clare is the exact same way he saw her when he time travelled. In the movie, everything is completely different. Through tilting the camera, Alba(at ten years old) sees Henry again after his death. It would have fit in with the book except that Alba has one of the kids she's playing with go and tell her mom that her father is there. Clare runs to the meadow and sees Henry for the first time after his death, which never ocurred in the book. As Henry disappeared and his clothes fell, through the camera zooming out we see Clare and Alba picking up his clothes and walking away together.
   It upset me that at least a few more scenes should have been added to the movie, an example being that Henry should have found out that Gomez was in love with Clare just as he was in the book, or that Henry's ex Ingrid was never even put it as a character, but only mentioned once. Something that was portrayed well was the scene where, as Henry was dressed up as a girl and was beating up a guy because of it, he met Gomez, or rather, through camera moving in a pan, Gomez sees Henry, and here he tells Gomez he is a time traveller, and disappears right before his eyes. It may not been as exact as the book, but it was humorous nonetheless. Overall, although the movie varied greatly from the book, the movie portrayed more of the romance between Clare and Henry, which was nice to see through the unfolding of it all. Even though the book showed all the struggle this couple had, the romance was still seeping through, and although they varied greatly, the movie and book were great.