Filming: The Time Traveler's Wife
Adaptation Of Audrey Niffenegger's Best-Selling Novel
Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams will portray troubled lovers Henry De Tamble and Clare Abshire in the big screen adaptation of The Time Traveler's Wife.
Before Audrey Niffenegger’s novel The Time Traveler’s Wife became a success—before the book even made it to stores—way-back-when-couple Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston acquired the film rights to the book under New Line Cinemas. Four years later, and after several changes of director, filming is under way, and only Pitt has a producing credit.
The Story
The Time Traveler’s Wife is a tale of romance decades in the making. The time traveler in question is librarian Henry De Tamble who, since the age of six, has popped in and out of his own past and future due to an unknown genetic disorder. The time traveler’s wife is Claire Abshire who, since the age of six, is visited by the time traveling Henry. Niffenegger masterfully handles the non-linear progression, done in a style similar to Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. The story is told through the first-person narratives of both Henry and Claire, and each individual section is marked with a date and time to help the reader make sense of Henry’s temporal comings and goings.
The Storytellers
The back and forth of the narrative promises to be a challenge for director Robert Schwentke (Flightplan) and leads Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams, or at least, their make-up artists. Though the film cannot explore all of the events detailed in the 500+ pages of the novel, key moments happen at almost every stage of the characters’ lives. It is doubtful that Bana, 39 years old and ruggedly handsome, will be portraying Henry’s 15 year-old self; it is likely, however, that McAdams will portray Clare ages 16 through 36, and maybe older. With casting still incomplete—Ron Livingston is only rumoured to be cast as Gomez, Clare’s college friend who doesn’t immediately take to Henry—there are probably a few more Henrys and Clares to be cast. Responsible for so much depth in the novel, one hopes that the characters' younger years are not lost or skimmed over in Traveler’s cinematic metamorphosis.
Rachel McAdams’ star has continued to rise since she first stole Ryan Gosling’s heart, on screen and off, in the Notebook. McAdams looks young enough to play the young and impetuous Clare at 20, but is also quite capable of playing the older, more life-weary—and wary—Mrs. De Tamble; Eric Bana’s turns in Munich, and as the ill-fated Prince Hector in Troy, have also proven him an able actor. For Henry, time traveling is not as much fun as you might think. Henry can come to anytime, anywhere, and in any season, and always without a shred of clothing on him. From a very young age, he has had to lie, steal, and break and enter to survive. This doesn’t even begin to describe the deeper pain his condition wreaks on his relationship with Clare. Bana and McAdams are playing two characters that love each other immensely, but the obstacles and, yes, tragedies they face must be accompanied by inspired and complex performances that suit an unorthodox situation. Fans of the novel will expect nothing less.
