Many time travel movies are about traveling through time, making drastic mistakes, and trying to fix them. About Time is about learning to stop needing to time travel. Richard Curtis’ 2013 film follows Tim Lake, who learns from his father on his 21st birthday that the men in his family have the ability to travel back in time. He is able to relive any moment that he can remember. His father uses this power to read all the books in the world and encourages Tim to use it on something useful and noble. And Tim, being a 21-year-old in need of a girlfriend, uses it on trying to find “the one.”
If you have watched the film before, chances are that Tim’s time travel ability isn’t the first thing you remember. It is the overall feeling of the film. It is the coastal summers in Cornwall, the family’s warmth and kindness towards each other, and the sense of an ordinary scene being highlighted for its beautiful aspects. By the end of the film, Curtis has convinced us and Tim that we carelessly move through our lives without appreciating their wonders.
The film’s most distinctive feature is that it barely uses its central device throughout the film. Tim does not go back in time to kill anyone, prevent any disasters, or anything in a grand sense. He uses his ability to get a girlfriend, redo awkward moments, and be less clumsy at social events. He mainly uses it for the small things in life. By not making time travel a spectacle in the movie, Curtis is able to force the audience to notice the little things in Tim’s life — a conversation with his father, his train ride to his job, and spending time with his wife Mary. The film shows that these are the moments that are worth going back for.
The film always brings it back to Tim’s relationship with his father, played by Bill Nightly. Tim’s father is quiet, gentle, bookish, and unbothered by the strangeness of what their family can do. He treats his ability to time travel the same way he treats everything else — something to enjoy rather than exploit. The scenes of Tim and his father carry the emotional weight of the film. They are never dramatic, and it’s just two people talking, playing table tennis, or walking along the beach. And from these ordinary and mundane things in Tim’s life, the audience and Tim learn the true meaning and cost of his power.
The scene that stuck with me the most was Tim’s second time living out one of his days. Listening to his dad’s advice, he makes sure to live out that day, stopping for its beauties. He is able to appreciate the little things he sees that he missed out on the first time he lived that day. It is a simple scene without any dramatic reveal or confrontation, but it is the moment when the film’s argument clicks into place. Curtis doesn’t use any grand gestures to make his point. He just needs Tim to stop and look.
About Time is ultimately not a movie about finding love, although it does have that. It is a movie about living in the moment and the irony that it takes a spectacular power to teach you how to appreciate an ordinary life. About Time doesn’t show the audience what you could do if you could change the past. It shows that you should learn to pay attention to the present. No matter where you are in life, this advice lands differently, but it hits especially hard for students here, where we are caught between chasing grades, securing internships, and planning for what comes next. About Time is a reminder that the life happening around you right now is the one that will be worth going back for.
