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Timeline

Timeline (2003) Movie Poster
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  •  USA  •    •  116m  •    •  Directed by: Richard Donner.  •  Starring: Paul Walker, Frances O'Connor, Gerard Butler, Billy Connolly, David Thewlis, Anna Friel, Neal McDonough, Matt Craven, Ethan Embry, Michael Sheen, Lambert Wilson, Marton Csokas, Rossif Sutherland.  •  Music by: Brian Tyler.
        A team of student archaeologists digging at a medieval site in France are somewhat surprised when their professor suddenly disappears... into the 14th century! Embarking on a perilous journey to rescue him from the middle of a feudal war, the students find that they're not just excavating the past - they're living it.

Trailers:

   Length:  Languages:  Subtitles:
 1:55
 
 2:21
 
 
 1:33
 

Review:

Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Image from: Timeline (2003)
Having read the book of Timeline, watched the DVD several times, and having read the comments posted so far, I'm tempted to make the following observations:

1.This is a FILM - it's ENTERTAINMENT. There is no way that one can compare a book to an adaptation - even the best ones. Some things just exist better on the page; it's as simple as that. If a screenwriter tried to remain absolutely faithful to a book, heshe would then have to try to convey internalised thoughts - the kind that can be represented in a book by the line 'He was thinking that he would..' and so forth. This cannot be easily translated into a screenplay. Therein lies the rub. Books in the main are not written with the intention of being made into films, however 'filmic' certain passages may seem to the reader. Therefore when trying to distil a 400 page book into a 2 hour screenplay, something has to give. If not, the end result is going to be an unwatchable stodge and half the story with no conclusion. People have been quoting how the science of the book was glossed over. They admit themselves that it took up the first quarter of the book at least. Do the same thing with a screenplay and people would be nodding off or walking out. Remember what happened with Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet? So long it had to have an intermission halfway. Hell, when I saw 'Matrix Revolutions' in Switzerland they stopped halfway through that for a break! (Draw your own conclusions). Conveying lots of information in a book is a different cognitive activity altogether. Audiences generally just don't have the attention span for this stuff. 'Timeline' the book and 'Timeline' the film are probably best regarded as two separate entities that share a common point of origin. Perhaps they should have said that the film was 'inspired by' the book and not 'based' on it. Either way, we're talking about 2 distinct forms of activity, which can't always be reconciled.

2.So-called historical inaccuracies in the screenplay - people mention how Mel Gibson uses allegedly accurate language in 'The Passion of the Christ', and how the English spoke such a way and the French another way. First of all, no one today knows for sure how people spoke 600 years ago. They can hazard a guess, no more. Books of the period were the province of the privileged few, and no private letters of this period survive. The earliest are the Paston letters 100 years after the time period of the book and film. Therefore we have no idea how ordinary people, such as English foot soldiers or French peasants, spoke. It's as much guesswork as Archaeology is - in the film Kate says how having seen the building she'd got the layout of the buildings wrong from the excavation she'd done - she couldn't know for sure because she hadn't (up until that point) been there - she had taken a guess based on the little evidence she had. That's all you can do with language from the period - give it your best guess. Language in England, as spoken by ordinary people, did not standardise until the King James Bible was made available to everyone. Until then there were vast differences in dialect and pronunciation, which meant that travelling from county to county could be like going from one foreign country to another. Besides, do people really want to watch every film based on historical events with subtitles? They'll be in for a shock when it comes to 'Troy' I'm sure! Brad Pitt talking Ancient Greek, anyone?

3.Adaptation of the book - it doesn't strike me as any worse overall than other Crichton adaptations - Jurassic Park, say. Come to think of it, did anyone complain at the time that the Dinosaurs were inaccurate?

(Which they invariably were, given that again, you can only guess from the evidence). There were fair spades of scientific sections in Jurassic, but they didn't make it to film. So they created characters for the film and changed others. They weren't making the book. It was a film based on it.

4.The budget - supposedly not up there on screen, no CGI, etc. Firstly, everyone knows that what a film costs to make is not translated directly to screen - you have to take into account actors salaries, film rights, etc, before you get as far as the sets and effects. £80 million? A pittance in today's terms. And by the way would that be a castle and monastery built entirely from scratch for the film? Full scale Trebuchets? Where did that budget go? Doh! Secondly, what sort of CGI exactly did people want in a film that takes place in the 14th Century? Surely better to have realistic sets than cheesy computer generated ones?

Well, those are my thoughts, for what they're worth. Just remember that you're supposed to go and enjoy a film as entertainment. I'll get my history lessons down at the Library.


Review by pogman44 from the Internet Movie Database.