Oops, Someone is Wrong on the Internet!
On Dec 18, 2022 we (IG Agents 19 and 77) published an article about
Recently I (Agent 19), saw that Metafilter’s Fanfare talked about the movie https://fanfare.metafilter.com/21784/About-Time — like most fanfare posts it was not impressive, some people liked it, a few people had misgivings of a moral nature — for example one commenter says “but I did have an issue with the fact that the main character effectively practices sex several times “on” his girlfriend while she thinks they’ve only had it once.” which of course if that were unethical then use of time travel would be unethical and the film would be a different kind of film — which I admit might be really interesting, Tim doesn’t want to use Time Travel because of the ethical implications but keeps getting put into situations in which he must use it.
This would be the story of a superhero living a miserable anonymous existence (never using his power for his own happiness), but continually having to time travel to save someone’s life. I suppose he would spend most of this time going back in time and sending warning letters to people to keep them from being killed — “Dear Mr. Khashoggi” and so forth.
But again as the article A Time Travel Movie That Should Be Seen And Thought About makes clear this is a movie about someone who decides to use time travel to be happy, instead of rich, or powerful, or altruistic.
This also applies to a similar complaint in the article
As I reflected on it over the years, the whole “keep pursuing the woman you want till she gives in” bit became a little more cringe-worthy. I’m not 100% certain that the fact that things work out okay in the end helps as much as it should.
Both of these complaints seem to not understand that only Tim has the experience multiple times, and everyone else only a single time. Even if one time traveling Lake goes back and relives a time with another time traveling Lake the second Lake does not remember it — although they may intuit that it has occurred, as in the conversation Tim has with Dad Lake regarding the latter’s cancer diagnosis. Thus while Tim keeps pursuing the woman he wants she does not ‘finally’ give in, she experiences it as
- First Meeting: Wow I met a cool guy we really seem to match, hope he calls
- First Meeting: Wow I met a weird guy at the Kate Moss retrospective.
- First Meeting: Wow! Somebody is saving me from this awful party. At the end of the evening — Wow, I would like to have sex with this guy!
As it happens on their first First Meeting things went great but due to problems time travel can’t fix we end up losing that first First Meeting and having to go to a second First Meeting some weeks later — A Kate Moss retrospective which is a disaster specifically because in between these two meetings (only experienced by Tim, the first which feels like they might be soul mates) Mary has gotten a boyfriend — when and where did she get him, at said awful party in between the two events. So Tim crashes the party, having the third First Meeting and Mary ends up going out with him instead of her other potential boyfriend.
As the process from Mary’s viewpoint is one meeting in which she meets her perfect man it can hardly be said that she was pursued and pursued until she finally gave in, at least not in the normal understanding of that phrasing. Normally when you say someone finally gave in after a long pursuit it’s because the guy was a nuisance and a borderline harasser. In fact out of the 3 first meetings we outlined above 2 of them were this is a good match meetings.
As usual internet commenters in pointing out an imagined moral failing in a scenario have missed out the real failing, and also something I don’t think is in keeping with Tim’s character.
In the second disastrous meeting Tim goes to the Kate Moss retrospective hoping that Mary will be there because he knows she loves Kate Moss, there he then abysmally pretends to care about Kate Moss and has to use time travel to cover up his lack of knowledge regarding Kate Moss.
To quote from our previous article on this movie (about the man named Dad Lake):
…he could have a day every year in which the wife is away with the kids doing stuff most of the day, he has the house to himself and go over that day for weeks at a time catching up on his reading. The mechanist in me wants to point out he could just do all his reading for the year on that one day and spend the rest of the year never reading a thing…
So, Tim knows Mary likes Kate Moss, he goes to a Kate Moss retrospective in the hopes of meeting this woman he is quite taken with from their one previous, time travel destroyed, meeting. The obvious thing for him to do is to go back to some day in his past when not much was going on, get all the Kate Moss material he could get his hands on, and study up. The usage of Mary’s own material to make a hit with her is a mistake, and it shouldn’t have been done. Maybe it would have been amusing if he went to the retrospective and found out aw damn, stupid man that I am I didn’t find out anything about my potential love interest’s main interest which I can now fix by time traveling and studying a day, but instead the movie took the lazy time travel/Groundhog day cheat of learning what someone likes and repeat it back to them.
As noted by Elizabeth de Cleyre in
Kate Moss doesn’t really come up in the film later, and despite both of the characters being bookish we don’t really know anything about what they like in the literary way.
I would guess that Tim probably likes Dickens as Dad would have been heartbroken otherwise.
It would have been nice if Tim studying Kate Moss caused him to develop an appreciation for something that Mary liked separate from him and that appreciation might have been noted in passing later in the movie (this is a definite failure of the happiness angle of the movie) but it is, all in all, a minor failing.
By the way Ms. De Cleyre above did not like the movie, but I didn’t get the feeling she had a big time travel fixation and thus I don’t think it is as demanding for her as otherwise — for her it seems mainly a crap romantic comedy not an interesting critique of time travel movies and by critiquing time travel becoming by extension a critique of romantic comedies as well, which is I suppose fair enough. You can’t appreciate the deconstruction of a genre if you’re not familiar with the genre.
But getting back to Metafilter, the really great part was that someone linked to this article https://qntm.org/tim and mentioned that the women in the film suffered from a lack of agency. The lack of agency is completely correct, and I will expound on that in a bit. But really it’s the linked article that this is about — because this is the person who is wrong on the Internet and also, amusingly, a good deal of their wrongness is a perfect example of some things I was talking about in my previous article on About Time.
To quote from the original article again:
About Time’s time travel mechanism is so slight and ridiculous as to indicate a sort of offhand contempt for those head-scratching difficulties the usual time travel movie lays out for its audience to be bewildered by.
Qntm.org’s take:
The mechanism for time travelling is wholly uninspired and stupefyingly uninteresting to watch; Tim has to go to a darkened room such as a cupboard, clench his fists and focus on an event from his past. Seems as if Tim could have discovered that all by himself years ago, but he only gets told at the age of 21.
Me:
For a mechanist or a puzzle solver, which most time travel afficionados are likely to be this absurd power is probably maddening. I know I can start thinking about genetics and wondering how far outside the Lake family the ability can extend, is the power only patrilineal, or can the daughter of a Lake pass it to her son?
Qtnm.org:
The family has a lovely but slow and forgetful Uncle Desmond, who presumably has the same time travel power as all the other men, but never mentions it. Are his dull wits the result of too much time travel? Or has he not even been told he has this power
Me:
As soon as Tim Lake has learned he can time travel he says it’s good he won’t have to worry about money and his dad warns him off using time travel to get rich as being at best counterproductive.
In fact About Time isn’t concerned with how to use Time Travel to get rich, rule the world, stop some awful thing from happening, keep from dying, get rid of time travel, or anything I have ever seen any other time travel movie concern itself with — About Time is concerned with how to lead a happy life and I guess also how to be a good person, coincidentally using time travel to do so.
Qtnm.org:
At the beginning of the film, the son, Tim (Tim/time, get it? Get it?) is told by his father that all the men in his family are able to travel in time — specifically, to unwind back along their own their own timeline to events in their past. The more exciting possibilities of this ability (wealth manipulation) are instantly jettisoned and Tim proves his terminal dullness once again by deciding to use the power to get a girlfriend (“the mothership”).
Ok now, I’m going to stop with that one and observe that I and whoever writes at Qtnm.org must be very different people because they seem to think using time travel for wealth manipulation, a subject that almost every other time travel movie and book has done to death, is somehow not dull.
Finally if you look here https://qntm.org/time you will see that Qtnm.org has written a lot about time travel —
Me:
The people who hated it were generally people who love time travel movies and had some very clever observations to make regarding such classics of the genre as Twelve Monkeys, or Back to The Future but nothing but contempt for this movie.
and
In fact About Time isn’t concerned with how to use Time Travel to get rich, rule the world, stop some awful thing from happening, keep from dying, get rid of time travel, or anything I have ever seen any other time travel movie concern itself with — About Time is concerned with how to lead a happy life and I guess also how to be a good person, coincidentally using time travel to do so.
And here is really where qtnm.org and I diverge, I’m pretty sure I have as much time travel movie and book knowledge as just about anyone, but when I watched the movie I was immediately struck by the obvious point highlighted above that this movie was about using time travel to do what most people want to do, have a happy life, and most time travel movies have goals that seem weak and immature in comparison (even if their time travel mechanisms are more clever, and the tricks they play with time are extremely cunning intellectual puzzles).
Finally I can’t help but wonder in what state qtnm.org watched the movie, because there are a significant number of factual errors that indicate they did not pay much attention.
I once had sex while a lousy overwrought 70s thriller was playing on a nearby TV screen— and I would stop the sex to watch (causing some irritation, but I’m a jerk) because there was an interplay between the sex and the movie that gave a feeling that I was trying to capture in a book I was writing at the time. I don’t know what the hell that movie was about really. Maybe qtnm.org watched About Time while having sex.
I have also watched a significant amount of movies on drugs — for example I once watched this
on some extremely potent LSD, followed by a movie that I am 95% certain was named Tennis Guys about a College Tennis team that goes out every night and does a lot of drugs and has a lot of sex and are even better Tennis players the next day, a movie that I thought might have been the greatest bad movie ever made because of how it unwittingly critiqued the American Dream, and a movie so bad that it cannot be found by title even in IMDB. So, did qtnm.org watch About Time on too many drugs to follow plot points accurately is what I’m asking.
I have also found that doing intellectual work at the same time as watching a movie will often cause me to misunderstand or miss crucial information. Perhaps qtnm.org was writing about how time travel worked in a movie more appealing to them, and so missed out on some things in this one.
So here are a quick list of factual errors made by qtnm.org:
Tim goes on a double date, and despite his continuing murderously bad dialogue (MAKE IT STOP) gets the phone number of an American girl named Mary….Rather than reschedule the double date…
Tim and his friend Jay (played by Will Merrick) go to a hot new restaurant where everything is in the dark, in there they are seated next to two girls, and make conversation. When he loses the phone number and cannot get it again because time travel reasons he cannot reschedule the double date because there wasn’t one.
Ok, thinking about the way their time travel works I guess he could have gone again and then really tried to memorize the phone number but maybe he’s not good with phone numbers or he just thinks that it was so perfect why spoil the memory, instead try another way to find her.
The family has a lovely but slow and forgetful Uncle Desmond, who presumably has the same time travel power as all the other men,
“Mum’s brother Uncle Desmond” is from the mother’s side of the family, it’s pretty strongly indicated the time travel power is patrilineal, as it is the Lake men who have it. Qtnm.org thought the beginning narration where Mum’s brother Uncle Desmond was introduced very boring, so that’s why they may have missed it. But on the other hand some familiarity with the human species and family relations should have prompted the consideration that perhaps Uncle Desmond was from the mother’s side of the family.
Aside from that there are a few pleasant scenes with Uncle Desmond, one where Dad Lake says how much he admires Uncle Desmond, and another after Dad Lake was dead when Uncle Desmond said that was the best day of his life and the day Dad Lake dies is his saddest, in these scenes Uncle Desmond and Dad Lake never use the word brother in reference to each other which would have been extremely weird if they were brothers but as they were not is quite reasonable.
I am starting to think gtnm.org must have been both on drugs and having sex, which just leaves the mystery why are they so upset about the whole thing.
The rule about not travelling back to before a child’s birth is actually pretty smart…
This rule is also introduced shockingly late — Tim’s father already knows the rule, but somehow forgets to explain it until Tim has accidentally lost Posy. (Tim’s father’s reaction: “Okay. Interesting.”)
Tim says “Okay. Interesting.” when informed of the rule. Which, given the tone of voice and such was like most people getting rather miffed at Dad and saying “It sure would have been convenient if you had mentioned that shit earlier, old man”
I agree Dad Lake is somewhat of an irresponsible hands-off kind of dad, more about this later as well.
There are also quite a number of other things that I think are just not well thought out and wrong, or where qtnml.org evidently does not understand this concept of time travel — for example:
There is an art exhibit where he knows Mary will eventually show up, so his master plan is to (ditch work? and) wait there for her, apparently for days.
I’m not really going to discuss those as I’m not sure how much text this internet can hold, but I will observe something regarding the earlier quote:
The mechanism for time travelling is wholly uninspired and stupefyingly uninteresting to watch; Tim has to go to a darkened room such as a cupboard, clench his fists and focus on an event from his past. Seems as if Tim could have discovered that all by himself years ago, but he only gets told at the age of 21.
Now I am a pretty scientific guy but given to wondering sometimes, is magic real, can I through powerful exertion of nothing but my will affect events in the world — even at some remove from me — but even I have never considered going into a darkened room, clenching my fists, and focusing on events from my past in order to time travel.
Frankly, in my teenage years I probably spent most of my free time masturbating. It’s nice to know that qtnm.org made better use of their time.
So all that said I would like to focus on an observation that qtnm.org gets absolutely right, although missing the point:
About Time is a story about a upper/middle class British family with no characteristics at all. I won’t go any further in my own description of these people because the opening narration of the film itself is about as damning an indictment as it gets. These are people whose defining traits are drinking tea on the beach, and watching films together outdoors, in the rain.
To quote Tolstoy “Happy families are all alike, boring and possessed of some magic superpower that allows them to remain happy throughout the vicissitudes of life; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
For the boringness of happy people I submit the nation of Denmark as evidence, a country often at the top of the world’s happiness index
A country so boring that front page news is often about someone getting stabbed — in another country.
A country so boring that the top topic of conversation is the weather, and not in the way they show you in old movies about country folk being boring and saying Hey Jeb, looks like rain — Yep, Seb, it shore do. But actual real conversations that can stretch upwards of 20 minutes where they talk about the weather in the past weeks has been wet, and the weather in the next few weeks is likely to be wet, but it can’t stay wet for always, no it can’t but it will try hah hah hah (actually that last witticism is my own invention, to relieve the tedium) and from the entirety of which one is able to derive the kernel of important data that Denmark is rather wet — a fact one could ascertain by sticking one’s hand out facing upwards.
In short, the family of the Royal Tennenbaums is interesting and unhappy and the Lakes are boring but happy, like Danes, and below is a picture of a favorite Danish activity
common subjects of conversation in that crowd — when does the show start, and when does the rain start.
I am only partially facetious here, there is a very connection between happiness and being boring, have you ever had someone tell you about how happy they are? Living in interesting times is a curse for a reason. So the interest of this movie is not very much the boring Lake family, except a bit the relationship between our two time travelers, but the power that allows them to remain boring and forever at tiffin, and perhaps what the necessity for a reality-warping superpower to maintain happiness implies about the actual attainability of that condition.
Well, I think I should leave gtnm.org alone for the rest of this article, mainly because I have a tendency to meanness when someone is wrong on the Internet, as have we all, and being mean seems a particularly wrong attitude to take when discussing About Time.
Earlier I said I would come back around to some subjects, so this must be the time for that.
Women do not have agency in this film
Absolutely — you do not have any agency when you are dealing with time travelers and you are not a time traveler, the even worst aspect of this is it is enshrined as a plot point that in the world women who know the Lakes can never have agency because The Lake Men can time travel. Although the part of the movie where Tim takes his sister time traveling with him does raise the point of what if The Lake Women can also time travel but nobody ever thought to try it out because patriarchy?
Now it’s true the name Lake is a fairy tale name, the power is a magical power and not a scientific one, and the men of the family can time travel is a magical rule although an even better magical rule would have been that the first born of the family can time travel, in which case when Posy grows up it would be her carrying the power, and then we would have at least the idea that in the future one woman would have agency in the ongoing fairy tale of the boring, eternally happy Lake family.
Frankly if I were to rate the writing of the story I would put it on a range between competent to fairly good with one brilliant bit — that of not using time travel for any of the stupid shit almost everyone uses time travel for. So the choice of The Lake Men can time travel is competent, being a fairy tale rule and fitting, but The First Born Lake of Every Generation can time travel would have been fairly good.
And it might have made for a nice teary-eyed post-credits scene if middle aged/old Tim catches newly 21 year old daughter Posy on the way out of the house —
Tim: Posy, so first day as a 21 year old treating you good?
Posy: Yeah dad, although I did make sort a fool of myself yesterday so…
Tim: (chuckles) well about that, I just might have some information that will help you repair things. Step into my office for a second.
Can’t have everything I guess.
Dad Lake is sort of an irresponsible dad
Whoa hey, Illuminati Ganga Agent 19, what are you saying!!??!
Well, Dad Lake has time travel and a daughter who’s main problem in life according to this story is that she fell for the wrong guy at the wrong party. Now perhaps he has tried to time travel fix things over the years, but it seems unlikely that he couldn’t, so not only does the daughter not have agency she does not seem to get the same level of parental attention that Tim, the next generation of time traveler gets, and in the end it is up to Tim to try to solve his sister’s problem.
Side note: if this was a normal time travel movie the symbolism in this scene with the white and black chess set would be that Dad Lake is the evil time traveler and Tim turns out to be the good one. I bet qtnm.org would think that was clever.
One of the better bits
When young Tim has a crush on an American girl, Charlotte, later, when he is living with Mary but on a night out with his friend from work Rory he runs into her. Due to the magic of time travel he is able to have sex with her if he wants, sex with the one who got away, who really wants to have sex with him, and he turns it down.
This is a reasonably common trope in romantic stories, to tempt someone and have them forego it proving the depth of their affection.
But of course it is better than that here, because there is time travel. In any infidelity there is always the chance that you could get caught, you could get an STD, you could run into someone later and it could become awkwardly apparent that you slept with them when you shouldn’t have, infidelity is dangerous and thus foregoing it is not just proving the depth of your affection, that your love is real, it is also not risking the love that you value higher than a sexual encounter that you still might value.
But with time travel, especially of the Lake variety, there is no danger. Tim could go to Charlotte’s house, have sex with her, multiple times if he wished, and then sated go back in time and skip meeting her but still have all the memories and sensations of that infidelity without any of the messy risk of it actually having happened.
But Tim doesn’t. His not sleeping with Charlotte is not just that he does not want to risk what he has with Mary, it is that he values Mary and he would not do something that he would consider wrong against her. It goes over and above the normal romantic trope by absolutely removing the chance of discovery from infidelity, and still refusing it.
I guess that’s pretty boring behavior, but I personally find it interesting and respectable.
Ok, this ends this addition of correcting the wrong people as much as possible while staying polite as much as necessary.
Until next time this has been IG Agent 19, with a little bit of help from Agent 77 who got links together, provided some personal anecdotes of prurient interest, and thought of the clever masturbation insult.
