“About Time” is a chick-flick with a unique time-travel and philosophical twist.
The 2013 romantic comedy “About Time” is more than another warm-hearted film with Rachel McAdams playing the love interest. See, “About Time” includes the element of time-travel into the mixture and inevitably brings with it the ethical implications of such adventures, giving us a wonderful topic to explore.
First things first, for those that have not seen the movie, the film’s description is, “At the age of 21, Tim discovers he can travel in time and change what happens and has happened in his own life. His decision to make his world a better place by getting a girlfriend turns out not to be as easy as you might think.”
WARNING: It’s best to see the movie before proceeding because spoilers are soon to be exposed.
Tim can time travel, but from the second his father told him of the ability, he warned that Tim should not use it to change history.
Time travel was a gift to be used to make Tim’s life more enjoyable, a tool for happiness, not world peace. His father warns him that Tim cannot go back in time and “kill Hilter,” but rather, he can go back in increments and relive moments for the better. Tim decides that day that he would use his gift for finding love rather than rewriting history.
His quest throughout the narrative is to find said love and protect it with his gift of time travel. Late in the movie, his sister gets into a serious car accident. He tried to avoid the incident and stops her from the scenario to ever occur. When he returns, he comes home to find his loving wife, but his baby daughter is now a baby boy. He learns to stick with time-travel as a gift for enjoying life, not changing history. His act of God – trying to stop his sister’s accident – showed many parallels to the butterfly effect theory.
The butterfly effect theory states, “The purpose of his provocative question [is] to illustrate the idea that some complex dynamical systems exhibit unpredictable behaviors such that small variances in the initial conditions could have profound and widely divergent effects on the system’s outcomes. Because of the sensitivity of these systems, outcomes are unpredictable.” Per American Scientist report.
When Tim tried to save his sister, he changed his family. He recognized the consequences of changing such a drastic incident and immediately reversed it back to normal. By doing this, he acts out of humility, recognizing both the power of his gift and its responsibility.
Tim had a moment of wisdom, a moment similar to the infamous Spiderman saying from his Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
The Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences researched this ethical responsibility and held a seminar discussing “The Ethics of Time Travel.” In it, professor of philosophy Mara Harrell made connections about how serious moral issues occur when considering time travel. She notes, “Even efforts to prevent tragedies could result in causing new ones or preventing other events from occurring.”
Harrell concludes, “We all may pick different options as better. Who is the authority to say what is right or wrong? Such a decision is at the heart of ethics as a discipline,”
Harrel makes it clear that interfering with history is a corrupt action when it comes to time travel. In “About Time,” Tim eventually decides to stop traveling back in time. His character states, “The truth is, I now don’t travel back at all, not even for a day. I just try to live every day as if I have deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it… As if it was the full, final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.”
Tim embodies the principles that Mara Harrell outlined during the seminar. He understands the power that time-traveling has and the repercussions of such actions. His decision to stop doing so showcases his moral compass. He’d rather give up the greatest gift – to be able to time travel – than interfere with history based on his own thoughts about the world.
“About Time” is a beautiful story of love and virtuously living with a time-traveling gift. This fun premise integrates philosophy and psychology, adding a deeper element to the weekend romantic-comedy flick.
Stream “About Time” on Netflix and discover for yourself.
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