ABOUT TIME: A VOYAGE THROUGH TIME TRAVEL CINEMA | Offscreen
Messages from the future, precognition, the Butterfly Effect, the Grandfather Paradox, time loops, multiverses, wormholes... There seems no end to the variations on the time travelling theme. Yet filmmakers were slow to recognise its dramatic potential. Despite several screen versions of Mark Twain’s novel "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court" (1889) and H.G. Well's novella "The Time Machine" (1895), and time travel being adopted as a recurring device in 60s TV shows such as "The Twilight Zone" and "Star Trek", it remained a marginal phenomenon on the big screen, chiefly confined to experimental or arthouse films ("La Jetée", "Je t'aime, je t'aime", "Idaho Transfer"). But the floodgates finally opened in the 80s blockbuster era with "The Terminator" (1984) and "Back to the Future" (1985), mainstream entertainment that hit the sweet spot between science and fiction. Henceforth, time travel, bolstered by increasingly sophisticated special effects, would be a familiar element in Hollywood's SF arsenal. Offscreen serves up not just crowd-pleasers such as "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure", "Looper" and "Interstellar", but some of the lesser known and alternative examples of the genre, from rip-roaring B-movies such as "Trancers" (1984) to brain-scrambling cult favorites such as "Timecrimes" (2007) and "Triangle" (2009).
PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED
Coppola’s time-slip movie, named after a Buddy Holly song, showcases Kathleen Turner on peak form as an unhappily married mother who is transported back to high school in 1960, where she has to confront her life choices all over again. Also featuring a Nicolas Cage performance which is eccentric even by Cage standards.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE
Billy Pilgrim becomes "unstuck in time", flung around between old age and childhood, marriage and fatherhood, life on the alien planet of Tralfamadore, and the firebombing of Dresden. This adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s cult novel features a Bach soundtrack played by the legendary Glenn Gould.
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE
Will Rogers, famously from Oklahoma rather than Connecticut, plays a radio repairman who gets a bump on the head, propelling him back through time to the court of King Arthur, where he uses his knowledge of modern technology to convince everyone he is a magician. This Pre-Code adaptation of Mark Twain’s novel also features Myrna Loy as evil Morgana Le Fay.
LES VISITEURS
Jean Reno and Christian Clavier play a medieval squire and his servant transported by a bungling wizard into the 20th century, where they wreak slapstick havoc. One of the highest-grossing French films ever made – unlike the 2001 Hollywood remake ("Just Visiting"), in which Reno and Clavier reprised their roles in English.
DONNIE DARKO
Jake Gyllenhaal plays a sleepwalking high school student who has visions of a giant demonic rabbit telling him the world will end in 29 days. Kelly’s directing debut is a twisted, darkly humorous teen movie with a uniquely ominous mood. Tears For Fears’ "Mad World" will never sound the same again.
TIME BANDITS
Young Kevin falls in with a bunch of delinquent dwarves who have stolen a spacetime map, and skips through history with them in the first of what the filmmaker has called his "Trilogy of Imagination". Anarchic, subversive mischief from the director of "12 Monkeys", with John Cleese as Robin Hood and Sean Connery as Agamemnon.
BEYOND THE TIME BARRIER
Of the three low-budget SF films shot by B-movie maestro Edgar G. Ulmer at the end of his career, this is the grimmest. A military test pilot is catapulted from 1960 into 2024 and discovers an underground dystopia where almost the entire population has been rendered deaf-mute and infertile by a cosmic plague.
TIME AFTER TIME
To escape capture in 1893, Jack the Ripper (David Warner) steals H.G. Wells’ time machine. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) pursues him to modern San Francisco in an effort to stop the killer’s continuing atrocities and bring him to justice. Clever, beguiling time travel thriller with a lovely romantic subplot.
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
Every midnight, an American writer, on a visit to Paris with his fiancée, is whisked back to the Left Bank of the 20s, where he hobnobs with Hemingway, Scott and Zelda, Gertrude Stein and other expat legends. A partial return to form for Allen, with plenty of shameless intellectual name-dropping, but also a few barbs lurking amid the cosy nostalgia.
SOMEWHERE IN TIME
Christopher Reeve plays a playwright who becomes obsessed by the actress in a vintage photograph, and hypnotises himself into travelling back through time to 1912 so he can meet her. Classic time travel weepie, adapted from a novel by Richard Matheson and featuring an exquisite John Barry score.
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
Not the lighthearted teen movie you might expect with Kutcher topping the bill, but a surprisingly dark time travel yarn in which a college student stumbles across an almost Proustian method of travelling back in time – he reads his old diaries. Problem is, each time he tinkers with the past to try and fix the future for himself and his friends, he only succeeds in making things worse. Much worse.
LOOPER
In the future, the mob disposes of victims by sending them back through time to be shot dead by "loopers". Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a looper who one day finds himself required to kill his own future self (Bruce Willis). The writer-director of "Knives Out" juggles multiple timelines in this enthralling SF thriller.
BEYOND THE TIME BARRIER
Of the three low-budget SF films shot by B-movie maestro Edgar G. Ulmer at the end of his career, this is the grimmest. A military test pilot is catapulted from 1960 into 2024 and discovers an underground dystopia where almost the entire population has been rendered deaf-mute and infertile by a cosmic plague.
SOMEWHERE IN TIME
Christopher Reeve plays a playwright who becomes obsessed by the actress in a vintage photograph, and hypnotises himself into travelling back through time to 1912 so he can meet her. Classic time travel weepie, adapted from a novel by Richard Matheson and featuring an exquisite John Barry score.
THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE
Erica Bana and Rachel McAdams play Chicago librarians who meet, fall in love, and marry – though not necessarily in that order, since the romantic relationship at the heart of this adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s bestseller is complicated by a time-travelling disorder that makes him appear and disappear at random. A bittersweet time-travel weepie in the tradition of "Somewhere in Time".
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