Suspend your disbelief

And so my 80's themed reviews bring me to one of the 80's true crown jewels-

"Somewhere in Time", starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, directed by Jeannot Szwarc and released in 1980- based on the novel by Richard Matheson.

The fantasy romance film "Somewhere in Time" is not a film that rings many bells for most people today, but most people who do have nothing but praise for it as a high quality film, as a piece of art, as an inspiration for them to get involved in film-making. I had never seen the film but I had heard quite a few 80's fanatics talk about how they loved this film. And so I happened upon a video in my local flea market and the man behind the tables told me that the film was not available on DVD and was very hard to find on Video these days (at least that's the way it is in Britain) and he told me it was a brilliant film and certainly worth buying for 5 pounds. And so I made the purchase and took the video home, and kept it for several days, waiting for a quiet day when I could watch this and really appreciate it without any distractions.

So on with the story........

The late Christopher Reeve stars as a successful Chicago playwright who is suffering from writer's block after a break-up from his girlfriend. Searching for a new muse he becomes inexplicably enamoured with a photograph of a beautiful English actress (Jayne Seymour), taken in the year 1912. His curiosity about this old actress becomes ruthless and obsessive and for reasons that will become clear when you watch the film he discovers a way to go back in time to 1912 to actually meet her.

And that is the story, and as absurd though it may seem, it actually works as a blisteringly mature piece of cinema.

The late Christopher Reeve casts off the Superman cape for a moment to play instead the role of a more human and ordinary character. Well perhaps 'ordinary' is not the right word since he is kind of a time-stalker really, albeit one who's motives are innocent. With an amiable and gentlemanly manner and an enlightened eloquence but a certain amount of youthful freneticness too. His performance is superb on a multi-levelled way with a lot of spirit and discipline when it comes to overwhelming emotion and concentration- Christopher Reeves really handles the passion well (it's a rare and special thing when I see a romance film which shows the lead man crying). I could easily feel compelled to say that Christopher Reeve's performance was great, simply out of politeness in light of the man's recent and sad death, but I don't need to.

He plays a man who has become resigned to a numb drum and unexciting life without new connections in an unappealingly concrete and impersonal city. But the sight of a photograph changes him- he picks up a spark of living and goes with it, his confidence taking time to emerge but all the while it is getting more compulsive. He draws us into the character and makes us champion him on as he relentlessly pursues the woman he loves and builds bridges along the way.

The enchantingly beautiful and photogenic Jayne Seymour also shines as the love interest, she is not only a pretty face but a woman with a history of patriarchal control weighing her down and repressing her spirit, wary of this stranger who comes to offer her emotional liberation. She is played perfectly as a lady of the time- very educated and graceful, introverted and not particularly dareing.

Christopher Plummer also does well as the rich and despicable acting manager who treats the actress Jayne Seymour as his property and he is a perpetually suspicious man (which I imagine goes with being rich and envied and being part of the upper class elite) and he treats Christopher Reeves as an unwanted outsider and always sees him as an undesireable cad no matter what, and he is determined to see to it that there is no romance between the two, because he is afraid of losing his prize actress, and he is dirty in his methods indeed. Christopher Plummer plays him well for all his snidey and ruthless qualities hidden under a smokescreen of manners.

Together the three characters make a beautiful tryst of conflict- of love and hate, instinctive trust and unreasoning hostility, beauty and malignancy, joy and sadness, life and death. It is the pulling together of all these contrasting elements contained within this lovely time capsule microcosm of the old fashioned upper classes that makes the film so grand- all juxtaposed and conflicting and full of the essence of real life, in a way that makes this a very rich 99 minute film indeed.

It is a film about many things- about love, about searching for the essense and passions of life. It is about concentration and focus and meditation and going for the impossible goals through sheer power of the will. It is finding true love, it is being inspired by a work of art- a picture or a play, or finding the bohemian lifestyle, something that may seem mundane but for reasons you can't quite explain it speaks to you as an individual person on a very root and deep level and changes your view of life and gives you something to strive or hope for, by learning to deal with life's unpleasantries and unpredictable dilemas and categorising them and rising above them, and we see this in the romance which is up against great adversity and yet remains passionate and unbreakable.

The film is superbly directed and certainly seems in touch with the high standards of the film-making of the 70's. The camera just gets such a firm and cozy grip on everyone and everything in frame and makes the images and actors so solid and arresting. It doesn't let us take our eyes off the characters, and it is not overwhelming or in-your-face either.

The look of the film is very natural and organic, and also very antiquated in a way that captures the same nostalgic and preserved feeling as Return To Oz. The sets, doors, chairs and ornaments are mostly made of wood, there's plenty of greenery and a bountiful ocean front. I find it very refreshing how natural the film is, its a nice and naturally bright film and all the more replenishing for it. All the music to the film is organic and old fashioned too- there's no 80's synths to spoil the effect or anything.

The imagery of the film is subtle but wholely appropriate with a lot of emphasised images of circles and ovals to enforce the semse of a time loop- a beach ball, an oval shaped room number header, a clock face, a circular framed photograph, a coin. There is also imagery of turning points to hint at the unpredictable events to come and to communicate life choices and consequences- it is a roadway crossing into two paths , it is a pair of trees growing side by side, branching away from each other.

It is not surprising that some reviewers have described this film as their inspiration for getting into film studies, because in some ways it is very much a film-student's film, in the same way as Fight Club is. It is a film in which the characters themselves are writers and actors. They are themselves looking for inspiration to connect and find love and its meaning and to express themselves, and seeking to decode the mysteries of life, in much the same way as some film lovers do when they watch movies. Not only that but our characters, like the viewer are very sceptical about the events on screen but they choose to suspend their disbeliefs because they want to believe in this and draw something out of it. The suspension of disbelief is very self-consciously made by gathering together all the right ornaments and looking for the right artefact to complete the spell, and ironically it is perhaps the nasty antagonism of Christopher Plumer's character that finally makes it real and unsafe.

The film downplays its fantasy element of time travel to som,ething that is merely background to the events and interactions which are presented as real and concrete- the romantic conventions dominate the film- a drama of manners, a triangle of characters, a soul searching piece. The film contains very little violence or profanity although it does have its sad and malignant moments, so it is appropriate for family viewing. But even so I imagine younger viewers won't find this film that interesting or exciting, but I could not describe this as a 'boring' film.

For me I thought it was an exceptionally good and mature romance film and I'm not much of a fan of romantic films most of the time, but I enjoyed this very much. It entertained me throughout- it was nice and disciplined, it was emotional without being melodramatic or saccarine, it was old fashioned without being boring, it was short and yet satisfying and although I was not sure what to make of the film's ending initially, the ending was overall a most appropriate way to conclude a film that has experience as its major theme. It is a fine and moving film indeed and one which lingers after viewing and a film I certainly took something very positive from.