ABOUT TIME
Director Richard Curtis
Cert. 12A
Running time: 123 minutes
Rooted in the outlook of white, well-off, middle-class, secular Britain, all Richard Curtis’s movies are eulogies to love in its various forms.
But true love only makes sense in a Christian framework (1 John 3.16). So Curtis is a man who struggles to understand life. About Time is a bitter-sweet piece which grapples with the fact that from the secular viewpoint the joy of love is trapped within the flow of time and is subject to the last enemy — death.
The film is a fantasy. On his 21st birthday, Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) is told by his father (Bill Nighy) that the males of the family have the ability to travel in time back into their own past. Incredulous at first, this power is used by Tim both for pleasure (securing his relationship with Mary), and for trying (in a very male way) to fix things — especially his sister’s disastrous life. But even granted this provision of many second chances, death inevitably wins in the end.
As with all Richard Curtis’s films, be warned, the language is awful at times. Also he continually propagates the lie of the goodness of casual sex which has been the source of misery to millions — especially those who, unlike Mr. Curtis, are not from a well-off background. But there is a deep celebration of heterosexual marriage and a tender-hearted take on the love between father and son. It becomes a secular sermon on how to live.
Reference to Jesus
There is one startling reference to the Lord Jesus Christ, in the context of death: ‘He was the Son of God and look what happened to him’ (crucifixion). Yes, Mr. Curtis, but that was not the end of the story. In the Lord Jesus we find the answer to the questions with which your film struggles — a love which has conquered and still conquers the grave. ‘For love is as strong as death... many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away’ (Song of Songs 8.6,7).
