The Time Machine (1960 Film) Review

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What a time travel movie means to you depends usually on the value you find in exploring the past and future; how we inform the present and what makes us want to be present in it? Or not, in this case?

 

The original Time Machine is a movie obsessed with the idea of moving past ignorance. It also seems focused on what our own ignorance and single minded focus can cost as, as the film's protagonist H. George Wells seems to be so focused on moving beyond a world with war as where his inventions will go that he is willing to invent a machine that can literally take him beyond it, beyond all of it. And that this machine will take him to where he hopes to be; a place beyond humanity's ignorance.

 

The story however consistently at its best, when it's not reliant on some old timey colonizing ideas of superior intellect and the guiding hand of knowledge, when it is showing us the cost of what that single barrelled approach strips us of; a person loses the people they relied on and believed in, now no more than a faint memory to honour their long lost friends. The world itself and all you found familiar is gone, lost to the continuous need to destroy and conquer, soon absolving itself of even the people who once called it home. Those who would be your closest of kin care not for violence, death or loss for they've lost any need for knowledge or ideas that don't inform a completely dependent life. Loss and struggle, the human experience in part made manifest as time continues a story of war throughout the ages, the first, second, the cold and then the costs of conflicts long beyond that.

 

The film has possibly one of the most gorgeously elaborate time machines in fiction which is visually distinct, alongside the brighter colour palette's and the distinct distant future architecture to always catch the eye. It is let down by, while trying to make them uniform, the slight goofiness of the Eloi as the all blonde and white race of beings in this 'paradise' and again, the Morlock's eye designs are amazing though they look a lil' goofy too when exposed to the light. The charm and the magic of this film is when its story is allowed to employ this need for needing people around us to anchor us away from ignorance, when the visuals are charming and striking and when the music and sound design is used to a really beautiful touch. It falls short with some outdated terminology and ideas that represent the regressive ideas of years past, when its silliness kind of undercuts some of the more serious plot points it has to make and the connection with George and Weena feeling a little weird.

 

Overall, the Time Machine remains a film I find joy and comfort in, for what it does well, it does well to remind me of the wonder of fantastical sci-fi that drove me to seek more. I hope once again, to travel to its imaginative futures. Someday.

 

Picture used from https://powerpop.blog/2020/02/01/where-is-the-time-machine-from-the-movie/

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