Amelia Cropley
A family favourite, About Time, hit the screens first in 2013 and has since become a British classic with more heart and soul than most films around, and an undeniable tear-jerker. Amelia Cropley details here why the film has become such a phenomenon and what we can learn from it to help us bounce up and down with joy about our little lives a little more…
It isn’t uncommon to have a film, yes that film, that completely changed your outlook on life and the everyday. A film that completely absorbs you in its cinema, its script and its music that you feel so utterly involved that you, too, cannot take a single second of it for granted. And so Richard Curtis’s wonderfully ineffable About Time (2013) captures the marvel that is life as a whole, from Monday through Sunday; from birth through death; the adventure of everyday life. A life previously believed to be a dull and awkward one.
But life isn’t dull, and it doesn’t have to be awkward. It can begin with enjoying the little things, appreciating the anxieties, loving the people around you and finding revelation in simple ideals. About Time is more than a time-travelling nonpareil, it is more than getting to change past embarrassing moments, it is not about having the power to change history or finding yourself stuck in the time continuum. About Time is simply a film teaching us how to love life. But more specifically your life. The one you are given.
The plot, as we all know it, presents the socially awkward Tim (Domhnall Gleeson), who when turning twenty-one, is revealed by his father (Bill Nighy) that all the men in their family have the ability to turn back in time to moments they have already experienced. It begins as a great chance to kiss the girl at New Year’s the right way; to meet the love of your life for the first time on three separate occasions, or in his father’s case, to read Dickens for the first time over and over again.
Life is about tea and scones on the beach, skimming stones every year without fail.
Yet About Time tricks us into thinking it is a romance between him and the girl of his dreams and corrects us that this is in fact a film about a relationship with your day-to-day life and appreciating what you have when you have it. Life is about tea and scones on the beach, skimming stones every year without fail. Life is about family table tennis tournaments, blue hair and flagging your brother as he leaves for London. Life is about dancing your way down the aisle and always having your mouth two seconds away from a laugh.
Now, what this film teaches us is that this is not some ground-breaking revelation of how we should live our lives but a gentle and inspiring way of how to make the most of it. It teaches us that if we were to have the same power as Tim, it would also mean requiring the unconditional kindheartedness of doing anything for the ones you love, like changing the trajectory of his friend’s play so it becomes a theatrical success or preventing his sister from meeting the guy that, in the first time continuum, broke her heart. It isn’t about changing the world, but to ‘use it for what you want your life to be like,’ as his dad tells him. It teaches us that there is great power in simplicity and that a superpower cannot nullify the beauty of loving people.
This infectious belief travels from the screen to our minds but so does the knowledge that while you can create happiness in the everyday, the balance is that sadness is inevitable, as it is in all of life, no matter how hard you try to make it perfect. We can feel like we have all the time in the world, but it is in fact the opposite. Time and people can be so quickly stripped away from us. The house you grow up in, and later get married in, will one day be the same house that hosts a funeral you never thought would arrive.
For Tim, he has the control of time in the palm of his hands and we in the audience do not – and yet the message is poignant that we cannot control everything. Some things, no matter how painful, have to happen. But the purity in this film is not to dwell on that sadness, or become so focused on what can go wrong, but to become so obsessed with what can go right, and enjoying everything and appreciating everyone you possibly can, to the fullest extent.
And so Bill Nighy teaches his son one final vital lesson. The real mothership: the formula to a happy life.
To turn back the time to the beginning of the day and start all over again. “He told me to live every day almost exactly the same. The first time with all the tensions and worries that stop us noticing how sweet the world can be, but the second time… noticing.” (About Time, 2013)
And for us, who do not have the magical ability to live our favourite memories twice, or change our most embarrassing moments, we learn to enjoy every day, to experience worries, but then to giggle and forget about the things we cannot control. To wake up and smile at the world. That no matter how late you are, always run back to kiss them one more time. Or tell someone you love them before driving away.
“I try to live every day as if I’ve deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary ordinary life.” (About Time, 2013)
We must take notice of how beautiful our home is, how brightly the sun shines, how love blooms and how love never dies. We learn to see the beauty in being able to give them one last goodbye, one last kiss. About Time leads by example on how to make the ordinary day an extraordinary life. A life of charm and sweetness, of love and kindheartedness, of selflessness and self-love.
“We’re all travelling through time together, every day of our lives. All we can do is do our best to relish this remarkable ride.” (About Time, 2013)
Amelia Cropley
Featured image courtesy of Douglas Parker via Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
In article image 1 courtesy of Seb Cumberbirch via Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
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