Time After Time (1979)

 Happy Valentine's Day!

I like watching Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steenburgen, and David Warner (LOVE David Warner! He's brilliant in Big Finish audios!). The premise of this strange romance is that a friend of H.G. Wells (quiet, awkward and very british McDowell) is Jack the Ripper (sinister, solemn, and intimidating David Warner) who steals Wells' time machine to evade the police, and ends up in the 1970s. Wells follows him, and they both come across Steenburgen's character. Romance and adventure ensues. Also murder. Murder ensues. One of the best things this film does is not making the Ripper sympathetic, even though he's given a face.

Unfortunately, the film has a weakness. Although I generally enjoy a mix of genres (this one tosses science fiction, romance, adventure, and detective fiction into a lovely genre salad), the balance and the transitions don't work well for a contemporary audience. Back then, perhaps, it was okay to abandon the life-and-death struggle against pure evil in order to enjoy a very sexy lunch for a few hours, but we're used to Criminal Minds, NCIS, The Mentalist, and other procedural dramas that emphasize the conflict between the need to focus to the point of obsession, and interpersonal storylines which frequently become the merest background, contained in two or three lines of banter after the mystery has been resolved. And we feel more comfortable that away. 

I personally experience frustration when political and public figures are seen golfing (for instance) when there are more pressing matters that require their attention. This film brought out that frustration. The sexual interaction between the characters (I wouldn't call it tension. There was no resistance) warmed detail by detail while reports of prostitute murders rolled in from the background. It struck my contemporary sensibilities as callous.

Another problem I noticed was contextual. H. G. Wells did, in real life, marry a woman with Mary Steenburgen's character's name. Unfortunately, he philandered serially, and she just happened to be the second and last woman he married (not for lack of proposing). His infidelity (if fidelity was part of their arrangement at all - his dedication to "free love" seems to have been consistent and sincere) does not live up to the standards of romance depicted in the film. For wells, casual sex motivated his trysts more frequently than love - and certainly not monogamous love.

Despite the casual depiction of Amy Robbins' seventies sensibilities (Did they use a condom? How would Wells have reacted to her insisting? Venereal disease was certainly extant in Victorian England. Did she insist on bringing condoms with her?) in the late seventies, typical audiences would likely have outright rejected Wells' RL polyamory (if it was polyamory, and not simply common infidelity). 

Anyway. Sex and genre. *nod*



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