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Somewhere in Time (1980)
Rate:
7
Viewed:
6/25
6/25:
I'm surprised that I had never heard of Somewhere in Time before and that it had a strong following.
After seeing the film, I can understand why, but there's a huge, huge, huge problem. This question must be
answered before anything else: "When exactly did it start?" Instead, director Jeannot Szwarc decided to stay
away from that and let the movie stand as it is. That's why Somewhere in Time was lambasted by critics
and performed poorly at the box office.
Let's reconstruct the loop for a minute: Richard Collier is handed the gold watch by Elise McKenna in 1972. Eight
years later, he visits a hotel that looks strangely familiar and decides to go back in time, that is, 1912
to reunite with Elise. She asks, "Is it you?" Eventually, they fall in love and have conversations. In front
of Elise, Richard accidentally takes out a penny with the mint date of 1979 and returns to the present day.
Afterwards, he kills himself (why would Richard give up so easily at this point is beyond my comprehension).
So...where is the true beginning, especially in regard to the watch?
Speaking of Elise's all-important question, there should've been a heavy cosmic connection at that moment
between her and Richard; instead, it goes empty-handed, and that's when Jeannot Szwarc fucked up royally. Some
have said, why not nix the time travel? Actually, I would keep the aspect intact for making the story
infinitely interesting. At least, the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan, looks great, and I like the
soft cinematography which resembles Claude Monet's classical impressionist paintings.
A lot of viewers have bashed Christopher Reeve for being a wooden actor, and I can agree with them for certain
works. But here, he turns in one of the best performances of his career and is much better than he was in
Deathtrap given that he takes on the role of a playwright in
both. I've found him less stiff and more outgoing, and he's believable as somebody who's at ease in a period
picture, hence the eventual casting in The Bostonians. By the way, I
didn't think there was anything wrong with his character's attire despite getting mocked by others for being
fashionably dated by at least fifteen years, but yeah, it would help if he could change clothes.
As for Jane Seymour, she's not bad, being possibly a better actress than Lesley-Anne Down, given their
British origins and their incomparable beauty. Unfortunately, her character is made to be two-dimensional
by Jeannot Szwarc when he took away her chance to have important conversations with Christopher Reeve. Instead,
he forces Christopher Plummer to be a cad in dealing with the unexpected visitor, taking away too much time
from romance development by creating needless drama.
All in all, if the question "when exactly did it start?" could be answered with Christopher Plummer out of
the way, Somewhere in Time might be transformed into an all-time great movie.