Film: Jessica Kellgren-Hayes
Travelling through time
1960’s The Time Machine is not to be recommended on the basis of its Academy Award winning special effects, which have aged terribly for a film about time travel!
Do try to look past the antiquated effects and make up to see the story beyond: George, an eccentric London inventor, creates a device that can travel through time – it occupies the same space, yet moves through eras. George doesn’t care much for his own time, an epoch when science is called on only to invent new weapons, ones that can more efficiently “de-populate” the Earth.
One evening, George takes to his machine and travels forwards in time. After accidentally stopping in the first world war (a conflict predicted by H G Wells when he wrote the book in 1895!) and experiencing the start of nuclear war between the hemispheres, George finally stops his machine in the far-flung world of 802,701 AD.
Wilderness has reasserted itself over the ages, save for some damaged but oddly-advanced structures. George meets the denizens of this era, the androgynous Eloi, who have no government, no economy, and no laws but live peacefully. Nobody in the society works, and worse, they don’t even know how to grow their own food. The Eloi can’t write or read and have grown terribly incurious.
George, knowing that asking questions is the only way man learns and develops, is deeply disappointed by the path humanity has taken. The Eloi can tell him nothing but escort him to a library of information discs. (CDs! H G Wells predicted CDs in 1895!)
To George’s despair, he learns that mankind is divided by the ultimate class warfare. The inhuman, cannibalistic Morlocks live underground in caverns and feed off the simple, cattle-like Eloi. The Morlocks boast advanced technology (including running water and heat) but are brutal, domineering and exploitative. The Eloi, far from being “free” as George first thought, are servants.
Wells was clearly well versed in Darwinism and the film runs with the book’s social commentary involving labour and capital evolving into separate races. The divisions of war finally become such that there is actually a physiological schism in the race: Morlocks and Eloi no longer even share the same biology.
This film suggests such division is mankind’s destiny, that international wars will lead only to ruin, and a collapse of the species intellectually and physically. George holds a book that crumbles to dust and his horror at the loss of intellectualism and curiosity is clear, yet he doesn’t give up. He doesn’t cower. Instead, he fights for the human race. Ultimately, he commits himself to the world of 802,701 and sets about the hard work of building a new culture, a new civilization.
The message is clear: if we fight for curiosity over bland materialism and consumerism we can save the human race.
