I really didn't think I'd ever find it. An entire film without a central conflict. Films are all about conflict - even the toy store-on-screen Transformers II had a central conflict (save the world from the aliens). But The Time Traveler's Wife (adapted from the bestselling book) has actually avoided any real point at all.
Watching this film was like watching luggage being sorted at an airport. A suitcase has no control over its fate, no ability to change its destination, and isn't great at conversation. A suitcase isn't "fighting" to get to San Francisco Oakland International. It doesn't charge forth to find JFK. It is a passive participant in the luggage sorting process and it goes where its tag specifies that it will go.
Eric Bana and Jennifer Connolly are very pretty designer luggage.
The wife is the most passive of the two - she is manipulated from an early age, her entire life defined by a man who himself has no ability to give her a long term relationship and who knows this as he manipulates her. She is also, curiously, not the lead character in the film. The director has aimed his lens at Bana, the husband, and kept it clearly focused in his direction. Bana's character is constantly confronted with hints of predetermination - he must do this or that because it is foreordained.
The device of time travel itself is almost a disaster due to logic failures, but really, this is a minor problem in a film that treats its characters as incapable of changing their own circumstance. By the end, we understand that neither character has really changed at all - they have just followed a script, been good little pawns, and have completed their rounds. And that's a real snooze. Neither of these characters is aspiring to anything specific - they are just reacting to input.
This film drove home for me the importance of clearly understanding your central conflict before considering a story to be "done". What on earth do these people want? How do they change? Where do we end up in comparison to where we started? This film provided no answers - just helpless pawns moved around against their will.
