A fantasy worthy of your Time
AWRINKLE IN TIME (PG, 109 MINS), DIRECTED BY AVA DUVERNAY
Madeleine L’Engle’s most famous novel is a perennial contender on lists of supposedly unfilmable books.
A Wrinkle in Time was published in 1962, after being rejected by thirty publishing houses. It went on to win awards and friends all over the world. As recently as 2012, it was voted the second-best children’s book of all time by American school journal readers, beaten only by Charlotte’s Web.
A Wrinkle in Time is a farreaching and fantastical thing, mixing family drama and oldfashioned adventure against a back drop of Christian teaching, theoretical science, pure fantasy and inter-dimensional travel. This film version keeps the major themes and plot-points of the book mostly intact, although it does drop L’Engle’s references to God in favour of the more wishy-washy ‘‘the light’’.
Ava DuVernay ( Selma) might not be the most obvious director in the world to bring a huge and effects-heavy fantasy to the screen. But DuVernay is a wizard at establishing credible human relationships between disparate people, and that is where this Wrinkle In Time gets its real magic and wonder from.
DuVernay and writer Jennifer Lee ( Frozen) set the story in the present day and are happy to strip away a bunch of ancillary characters to focus on the book’s central storyline.
Young Meg Murray ( 12 Years a Slave‘ s Storm Reid) still believes her scientist Dad (Chris Pine) is alive, even four years after he mysteriously vanished one dark and stormy night. Meg’s genius kid-brother Charles Wallace agrees, and somehow strikes up a friendship with three women – Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Which and Mrs Who – who might hold the key to finding him.
From that set up, DuVernay whips Wrinkle into a frenzy of fantastical landscapes, outlandish beasts and nonfrightening villains. We don’t ever doubt that things will turn out alright for Meg and co. And yet, as the darkness that has taken their dad threatens to engulf the kids forever, the film does take a surprisingly grim turn.
I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen a fantasy or sci-fi film before that doesn’t feature a single fight scene, or even anything that could be called a weapon. The conflicts in this film – and L’Engle’s book – are resolved by intelligence, understanding and working together. Even the evil darkness can be sent back to where it came from by people who just choose to do good despite evil’s existence.
A Wrinkle in Time isn’t a perfect film, and it will alienate as many people as it entrances. But count me happily in the latter. There is a commitment to the story and the characters here that is palpable. The people and their relationships aren’t merely devices to justify the set-pieces, they are the actual reason the film exists.
And any film in which all the best decisions are made by women, three of whom can get around space and time just by thinking about it, and one of whom speaks only in classical poetry, is frankly a little overdue when women in most mainstream sci-fi until very recently didn’t get to do much at all but sit in the background making admiring noises while the boys played with their toys. But A Wrinkle in Time isn’t just an exercise in doing the right thing. It’s a smart, funny, spectacular and deftly done film.
– Graeme Tuckett