Melancholy metaphors

It's a cliché that typically rings true: The book was better than the movie. The Time Traveler's Wife, however, is one of the few exceptions that prove the rule. Veteran screenwriters Jeremy Leven and Bruce Joel Rubin have taken an iffy first novel from Audrey Niffenegger and stripped away most of the maudlin sentimentalism that polluted an inventive and poignant premise.

Even without the excessive melodramatics and purple prose, the story is dripping with emotion. Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana) is afflicted with a genetic condition that causes him to slip forward and backward in time without warning. He attempts to make a life for himself as a Chicago librarian, but his days and nights are haunted with the ever-present threat of suddenly finding himself decades ahead or behind the present, naked (alas, his clothes don't travel with him) and forced to fend for himself until the episode concludes and he returns to the present.

Claire Abshire (Rachel McAdams) begins receiving visits from DeTamble at the age of 6. Without any allusions to sexual impropriety, the pair initiate an affair that will last a lifetime. Abshire falls hopelessly in love and spends her youth awaiting the frequent visits that punctuate her life. When the couples' respective timelines converge by chance during Abshire's 20th year, they embark on something more closely resembling a conventional relationship: dating, marrying and starting a family.

Abshire's mantra will resonate with anyone who has experienced separation from a lover: "It's hard to be the one who stays," she explains to a friend. And, indeed, melancholy is always close at hand. Trapped as she is in the tractor beam of an irresistible affection, Abshire has little choice but to surrender to fate - willingly at first, then more reluctantly as time marches on. Absence has its own special gravity, and the forced separations have the effect of infusing every meeting between the blighted couple with a fierce passion and acute awareness of the preciousness of every moment they have together. It's a romantic paradox, and, from beginning to end, the film is in real danger of tumbling into the deep end of melodrama.

Bana is guilty in spots of playing just on the cusp of sappy, but overall he's up to the task of remaining convincing in a very challenging role. McAdams certainly has the looks to inspire devotion bordering on the obsessive, but she also has the requisite complexity to inform a great many pregnant pauses and smoldering looks with meaning.

Robert Schwentke's directing is laudable. He's courageous enough to offer up long scenes featuring little dialogue that many directors would edit down to nothing. More impressive still, the director and screenwriters successfully weave a byzantine storyline together seamlessly enough to avoid calling excess attention to the incessant shifts in time and place.

Niffenegger's 2003 debut novel was initially passed over by publishing houses, but eventually found its way onto the best-seller lists. For all her failings as a stylist, the author sells her unusual premise well, employing her central metaphor to transform her own history of failed relationships into an affecting tale of a powerful love that simultaneously conquers time and fate and is conquered by it. The adaptation to film has been a healthy and artistically profitable one, stripping the fat from the story and crystallizing its strong points.

It is tempting to approach such romantic subject matter with a skeptical eye, but The Time Traveler's Wife should weather even the most withering looks. From the opening sequence, where we see DeTamble make his first trip through time, the fantastical premise is relayed clearly and convincingly, never losing track of its impact as a metaphor for the heartbreaking transience of life and the hard realities of love and loss.

As DeTamble learns early on, he can't stop the inevitable approach of tragic happenstance and death. Over and over again, he is confronted with a question every one of us will confront at some point in our lives: Do we writhe in agony at the unfairness of life, or bear up as best we can and appreciate what we have? Niffenegger's answer is clear and resounding.

James Walling can be reached at
jwalling@praguepost.com