What's this we stuff?
The new film version of The Time Machine is
misconceived from jump. A philosophical dilemma dressed up
like an action picture or maybe a romance, it's part
Planet of the Apes, part Star Trek, and part
One More Inexplicable Choice by Jeremy Irons (whose
appearance as the hoary Uber-Morlock -- horrifically white,
bony, and mean -- reeks of his role in Dungeons &
Dragons). Based on H. G. Wells' prescient science
fiction tale (written way back in 1894), the movie raises
all kinds of great questions concerning the dangers and
thrills of time travel (Can one individual's misstep alter
the planet's future? Is fate fixed? What happens when you
go back, knowing the future? Will Orlando Jones still be
hawking stuff in 2030?), but backs off from every one.
As the philosophical dilemma angle gets short shrift, so
the action angle is also in trouble. One problem is that
the time machine doesn't actually move: built by Victorian
scientist Alexander (Guy Pearce), it is an elaborate chair
(that looks a little too dentist-y for comfort) adorned
with levers, wheels, and glass pipes. The concept -- not a
bad one -- is that time travel is not spatial but, well,
temporal, which means that once the machine starts whirring
and whooshing, it remains stationary inside a strange
little bubble, while the world bucks and changes around it.
This means, of course, there's lots of blue screen work and
digital effects, all darn dull to watch.
Once Alexander gets out of the contraption, there would
seem to be room for movement, exploration, and adventure.
Or even, you know, science fiction as deliberate social or
political allegory. But where the novel concerned itself
with urgent class questions as these persisted into a
post-apocalyptic (and of course, metaphorical) future
world, the 2002 film is kind of la-de-dah about the whole
science fiction allegory thing. Directed by Wells'
great-grandson Simon (whose previous credit is co-directing
DreamWorks' animated film Prince of Egypt) and
written Josh (Gladiator) Logan, this Time
Machine guts the original's urgent class analysis, in
favor of an "emotional" trajectory, combining a little
sensitive guy romance thing, a cautionary tale thing, and
finally, an action-hero-saving-the-day thing.
Alexander begins the film as a socially awkward scientist,
bumbling and sweet, with a penchant for pocket watches and
professorish vested suits. Pearce brings a beguiling mix of
intelligence and angst to the role (he's not so stiff as
Rod Taylor was in George Pal's 1960 film), as well as an
emotional curiosity. His girlfriend Emma (Sienna Guillory)
inspires him to be passionate, and if he's a little green,
he's also mostly endearing. When his marriage proposal ends
in disaster (that is, her murder by a mugger who is also
very unprepared and awkward), he dedicates himself to
building a time machine so that he can go back in
time to put that situation right, or better, avoid it
altogether.
When this proves impossible (for reasons that aren't well
explained, especially as they are supposed to convince this
"scientist")), Alexander starts whining to his best friend,
the suitably worried Dr. Philby (Mark Addy, who must surely
be tired of playing sidekicks to waffling heroes by now):
"Why can't one change the past!?" Philby looks about as
flummoxed as you might, probably considering all the
reasons why "one can't" do such a thing (like, maybe,
economies of matter, energy, and Joan Collins, as in: "He
knows, doctor, he knows"). But Alexander decides to
go look for an answer, but going into the future (why,
we'll never know). He sends his machine forward to 2030,
where he meets a holographic New York Public Librarian
named Vox (Orlando Jones), who stores all of human
knowledge for all time and is willing to regurgitate at any
moment. Though Alexander learns that he has made a little
historical footnote of a name for himself in the future, he
also doesn't have an answer to his question. And so he
pushes on.
At this point, the film just lets go of all sense of
direction or focus. Alexander whooshes forward to a Blade
Runnerish, about-to-destroy-itself NYC (2037) and then,
when the explosions all around him rock his machine and
knock him out so he hits a lever with his head, he hurtles
forward 800,000 years. Unconscious when he lands, Alexander
is fortunately rescued by Mara (Samantha Mumba), a
conveniently English-speaking member of a really friendly
community. Post-apocalyptic but also prelapserian, these
folks are called the Elois. They live in translucent pods
on the sides of cliffs (looking "toward the light") and
dress in soft, earth-toned outfits. They're gentle,
spiritual (though they have what appear to be collective
nightmares), and naïve-seeming tribal types, played by
actors cast, as the press notes have it, "to reflect the
evolutionary path on which it appears humanity is heading."
Put bluntly, the Elois are beige-brown-black. In addition
to Mara, the only other Eloi with more than two lines of
dialogue is her brother Kalen (Omero Mumba, who is, as it
happens, Samantha's very own little brother, and an
aspiring hiphop artist currently working on his first cd).
As the nightmares forewarn, the Elois' edenic existence
is, however, plagued by monsters called the Morlocks. Where
in the novel, the oppressed Morlocks were fighting back
against the elite Elois, here the Morlocks are languageless
and apparently quite dumb and crude, not to mention
sincerely ugly: skull-eyed and smashed-nosed. Though they
live underground, they pop up occasionally (literally, as
the sand swirls and sucks around whatever temporary holes
they make) to steal Elois for slave labor and food. But
when the Elois mournfully bow down and accept this as the
way of the world, Alexander fumes and yells. "Sometimes,"
he exhorts, "We need to fight!"
Um, what's this we stuff, white man?
Apparently, this is where the film's time-traveling class
analysis has landed, in the brutal conflict between the
pasty-white slavers and their exploited and abused
"resources," the "exotic" (so-called by producer David
Valdes) Elois. When Alexander heads down the hole to rescue
a "stolen" Mara, he encounters the Uber-Morlock (the only
one with speech, again conveniently, English), who offers
some pseudo-rational drivel concerning slavery and
cannibalism, but nothing that helps to pull any of the
film's ongoing illogic together, as narrative or ideology.
During their discussion of time travel, dreams, and
morality, the Uber-Morlock shows Alexander his ugly back
(nasty-looking spine exposed), as if this explains his
imperialist-capitalist egomania, but really, he has nothing
new to say, even though he's supposedly living some 800
centuries from now. While the Uber-Morlock goes on about
his sorry state and Alexander contemplates the depressing
end of his own ingenuity, Mara's locked in a cage, waiting
to be saved. You would think that maybe, just maybe, the
future would bring a new story.
