Would that all women frustrated by the end of an affair could turn that trauma into a bestselling book as well a major motion picture produced by Brad Pitt. But that’s exactly what author Audrey Niffenegger did when she wrote The Time Traveler’s Wife.  What a great way to get over a soured romance!

She wrote this science fiction, romance, dramatic epic that became the motion picture starring Rachel McAdams as Clare Abshire and Eric Bana as Henry DeTamble, the man afflicted with a gene that causes him to travel involuntarily through time.

The story spins along with Henry’s comings and goings starting at age five after watching a horrible wreck.  He’s unable to control jumping back and forth in time because of his genetic disorder.   When he is pulled out of the present moment to another time, he leaves the clothes he was wearing behind and arrives at a new location, without a stitch on. His main concerns upon arrival are finding clothes, acquiring money and figuring out where he is and how he can get back to where he was before he left.

Unless you pay close attention it is hard to work out a sequential story that starts with a young adult Henry meeting Clare when she is six. There is an immediate attraction and their relationship blooms as Clare grows older and Henry at various ages literally drops in and out of her life.  They eventually marry.  After several futile attempts to have a baby, Henry has a vasectomy worrying that he has passed his genetic problem to the fetus.  Rachel is enraged but thwarts the older Henry by becoming pregnant when a younger Henry drops in. 

Rachel and Henry patch together a regular life, interrupted by his unexpected travels through time. The third act of this piece becomes cluttered with ominous suggestions about Henry’s death, followed by more scenes with this pair sorrowfully clutching one another. More angst and tension ensue until at last Henry travels out of the frame.

The acting is superb, the cinematography has an award winning quality and the script is admirable considering the out-of-this-world story line.  One can’t help but wonder if Brad Pitt was so enchanted with the atmosphere surrounding The Curious Case of Benjamin Button that he decided to have another run at the enchanted film genre with this film.  Whatever his motive, it works and in doing so helps him and his Make It Right Foundation move forward in their re-building of the Ninth Ward project in New Orleans.