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Aug. 27th, 2009 02:55 amWe saw The Time Traveler's Wife last week. I hallucinated something into the plot. If you've seen it or aren't likely to:
Toward the end the time traveler, whose ability is congenital and ill-controlled, realizes he is going to die soon, having a) noticed he never runs into future selves past c. age 45, b) been told so by his daughter, who time travels in from the future, c) observed himself lying on the floor bleeding and naked. (Why naked? Because it's patently absurd to think your clothes would time travel with you, of course.)
A moment comes when he pops away, and then some other version of him eventually pops in - shivering, naked, on the floor. Next scene he's in the hospital, where mention is made of hypothermia. He recovers, is in a wheelchair, explains that he was being chased in the snow by two men and hopped onto a train or something and was saved by suddenly time traveling.
My mistaken assumption was that the hypothermia was a complication of the shooting. This turns out to be a second incident, though: he's fatally wounded by a hunter, I believe his father-in-law, when he time travels into the forest at his wife's childhood home. As we never see that other scene with the train and there are two hunters (and it's snowy out so there's every reason for hypothermia to have happened, esp. to someone bleeding heavily), when this scene finally comes and then we're suddenly at his funeral I become very confused. He was in a wheelchair from this very injury, I think, so how can he be dead?
Here's where I briefly hallucinate: Ah! He's been dead the whole time--this wheelchair thing was a fakery. One of his past selves must have stepped in shortly before his own death, plausibly falsified the fatal injury with some less extreme version on his own person, gotten rid of his future corpse, and convinced his wife he was going to live--she'd been getting understandably agitated about all those signs of his imminent death. So he faked his own life out of love for her, in order to soften the blow or give them more time together or both or some other reason.
That is a kickass plot twist, all suffusive with logically confusing but tragic romanciness of the kind the movie was trying for, and I guess I have copyright to it? The crippling but non-fatal incident is a red herring but (unless extensive cuts were made) it didn't seem intended to foster my particular misreading. Maybe someone who's read the book can correct me, though.
Julie, trying to follow my explanation but who had correctly picked up that his death would occur on the floor, objected, But he was at the hospital! I counterobjected, They took him there--it's not like he can't travel through space.
The movie is silly enough that you do tend to forget he can travel through space.
Toward the end the time traveler, whose ability is congenital and ill-controlled, realizes he is going to die soon, having a) noticed he never runs into future selves past c. age 45, b) been told so by his daughter, who time travels in from the future, c) observed himself lying on the floor bleeding and naked. (Why naked? Because it's patently absurd to think your clothes would time travel with you, of course.)
A moment comes when he pops away, and then some other version of him eventually pops in - shivering, naked, on the floor. Next scene he's in the hospital, where mention is made of hypothermia. He recovers, is in a wheelchair, explains that he was being chased in the snow by two men and hopped onto a train or something and was saved by suddenly time traveling.
My mistaken assumption was that the hypothermia was a complication of the shooting. This turns out to be a second incident, though: he's fatally wounded by a hunter, I believe his father-in-law, when he time travels into the forest at his wife's childhood home. As we never see that other scene with the train and there are two hunters (and it's snowy out so there's every reason for hypothermia to have happened, esp. to someone bleeding heavily), when this scene finally comes and then we're suddenly at his funeral I become very confused. He was in a wheelchair from this very injury, I think, so how can he be dead?
Here's where I briefly hallucinate: Ah! He's been dead the whole time--this wheelchair thing was a fakery. One of his past selves must have stepped in shortly before his own death, plausibly falsified the fatal injury with some less extreme version on his own person, gotten rid of his future corpse, and convinced his wife he was going to live--she'd been getting understandably agitated about all those signs of his imminent death. So he faked his own life out of love for her, in order to soften the blow or give them more time together or both or some other reason.
That is a kickass plot twist, all suffusive with logically confusing but tragic romanciness of the kind the movie was trying for, and I guess I have copyright to it? The crippling but non-fatal incident is a red herring but (unless extensive cuts were made) it didn't seem intended to foster my particular misreading. Maybe someone who's read the book can correct me, though.
Julie, trying to follow my explanation but who had correctly picked up that his death would occur on the floor, objected, But he was at the hospital! I counterobjected, They took him there--it's not like he can't travel through space.
The movie is silly enough that you do tend to forget he can travel through space.
