Timecrimes (5 Stars)

I expect my regular readers will blink when they see this review. Didn't I watch "Timecrmes" two weeks ago? Yes, I did. A film this good has to be watched repeatedly, even if I have a stack of other films waiting to be watched.

Today is the fourth time I've watched the film, and I've finally understood something that wasn't clear to me the last three times. Maybe some of my readers will laugh at me, because they immediately understood the things that took me four viewings. I need to give away spoilers to explain my problems understanding, so if you don't want spoilers please stop reading now.

Still here? Don't say I didn't warn you.

What I thought was strange the first time I watched the film was the way Hector tricked fate. His wife died, so he went back in time and stopped his wife dying. He cheated fate. He pretended his wife had died, so she didn't die. That was actually closer that what I understood the second time round: I thought that Hector's wife didn't die, he just thought that she died. Both interpretations were wrong.

What confused me was the necessity of causality. I thought that Hector was forced to repeat his actions when he went into the past. That's neither completely wrong nor completely right. There's a pull on Hector to make him repeat himself. Some of his actions, like making the unnamed hairdresser get undressed, were deliberate attempts to repeat actions, but others, like his phone call, were accidental. His deliberate acts combined with his accidental acts to make him repeat himself. That's what I thought happened when his wife died. But I was wrong.

Hector had the power to deliberately change his actions. He could fight against causality. His wife died, so he was able to change the past and stop her dying. However, if she hadn't died, he wouldn't have gone back in time to stop her dying, so she would have died. You can see the problem. It wasn't a matter of tricking fate, he was tricking himself. He saved his wife, but he made it look like she died, to make his past self want to go back in time and save her. Only his present self knows that she didn't die.

So that's it. That's what I finally understood today. I hope my readers who've watched the film understand it as well. I hope they understood it faster than me.

Success Rate:  - 4.6

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