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I had a dream once where I travelled back in time.
I wasn’t transported physically like Marty in Back to the Future for example,
it was more like Wolverine in Days of Future Past,
whose present day consciousness was transported into the body of his younger self.
Except, I didn’t wake up shredded in the 70s,
I woke up in class back in high school,
and it seemed I had to relive my whole life again from that point.
After I woke up, I wondered what it all meant.
We are so bound by time.
By its order.
Like many others, I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of time travel.
There is an undeniable appeal about their ‘what-if?’ scenarios;
what if you could go back in time?
What if you know what is going to happen in the future?
What if you re-lived the same day over and over?
I think we better start over, don’t you?
It is pretty understandable too given the nature of our existence.
We exist within 3 spatial dimensions, which gives us a certain degree of spatial freedom.
We can move left, right, up and down, backwards and forwards.
And we can re-organize the space we move around in,
thereby increasingly turning it to our advantage.
Naturally, there are still dangers to be found here, but overall,
I think it is fair to say that we, at least to some extent, have mastered our physical environment.
When it comes to time however,
we are bound to just one temporal dimension.
We are pushed into a single direction,
into an unknown future that we observe from the infinitely tiny sliver that we call the present,
a brief instance of conscious awareness that almost instantaneously slips away to become the past.
In this dimension, there is no going back, there is no going left, or right,
there is not even standing still.
No matter how much we struggle, no matter how much we resist,
we are utterly at the mercy of time.
It can't be bargained with.
It can't be reasoned with.
It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear.
And it absolutely will not stop... ever.
As such, time is also a source of existential dread.
We fear the future, both in the sense that it is unknown,
and in the sense that it will inevitably, and unstoppably, impose itself on us.
The Terminator films are perhaps the most famous depictions of this feeling of being essentially attacked by the future,
of being defenseless in the face of our impending doom.
What do you think we’re seeing?
The detritus of a coming war.
Beneath its espionage action, Tenet also presents an interesting conflict in which future humans are inverting time to attack the present,
as they blame our society for ruining the planet, and therefore, the future.
Don’t try to understand it.
Feel it.
Basically, it reflects our fear for the consequences of our actions.
Films like Looper,
in which an assassin who eliminates targets from the future is faced with his older self,
and Mr. Nobody, in which the main character can envision all the possible outcomes to his actions,
also show this dread on a more personal level.
They show how we fear who we might become,
how we fear what happens if we make the wrong choices.
We cannot go back.
That’s why it’s hard to choose.
Or, as the series Devs explores, if we can make any choices at all.
You knew I was going to come here.
And you know what happens here every moment?
Yes.
A mysterious thing, time.
And so again, it is understandable that we have a natural desire to break free from the firm grip time has on us,
to claim the same freedom we have in our spatial dimensions,
the freedom to make changes, to re-arrange things, to have more agency in the unfolding of our lives.
Now you need to tell me what your plan is to save the world.
For one, it could resolve some of the major existential issues we are facing as a society.
In Interstellar for example, the main character leaves our dying planet to find a new home in another galaxy.
Ultimately, we learn that he is guided by higher beings,
which he believes to be future humans who have transcended the dimensions that we are bound by.
They’re not beings, they’re us!
Either way, they reach back in time to provide him with the information that is necessary
to give humanity another chance.
The series Terra Nova shows our planet in a similar state of decay,
and also uses time travel to overcome these issues,
although here it is not done by searching the depths of outer space, but by simply going back to prehistoric times.
We are at the dawn of a new civilization.
Though the series itself wasn’t great and was cancelled after its first season,
its premise was an interesting reflection of our desire to return to a point where our planet was still unspoiled, unpolluted,
like the garden of Eden, a place where we could start over.
Except, of course, this time we’ll learn from our mistakes.
This time, we’ll get it right.
So you’re saying that you and granddad, and his brothers, could all travel back in time.
Absolutely.
But, probably more interestingly, at least based on how many stories focus on it,
is how time travel provides us with more freedom in our personal lives.
We see this in a variety of films like Primer, About Time, The Butterfly Effect, Avengers: Endgame, The Prisoner of Azkaban,
and even Hot Tub Time Machine,
all of which focus around individuals who gain the ability to travel back in time.
Each of course have their own set of rules and limitations,
but still, we immediately see how this increased temporal freedom can be used for our benefit.
Today before 12.30, we’re gonna buy as many shares as we can of RGW.
We could use the knowledge of the future for financial gains,
we could re-do awkward interactions,
or we could utilize the extra available time to expand our knowledge,
this is how I’ve been getting to my lessons all year.
or to enjoy more leisure time.
For me, it’s books, books, books.
I’ve read everything a man could wish to, twice, Dickens three times.
If we would want to, we could even make larger changes,
and significantly change the course of our lives, or that of others.
I’m reliving the same day over and over.
Another way our fantasy to escape from the linearity of time is reflected in stories
is through the concept of time loops.
Today is yesterday, and tomorrow is also today.
Time loops have characters repeating the same time frame over and over.
This can be a day like we for example see in Groundhog Day or Palm Springs,
or it can be shorter amounts of time.
In the film Source Code, the main character keeps reliving the last 8 minutes of his life.
Please just explain to me what the hell is happening.
In Edge of Tomorrow, the timer runs as long as Tom Cruise manages to stay alive,
which also isn’t that long.
And in the video game Outer Wilds, you play as an explorer who ventures into space to solve a mystery,
only to discover that after 22 minutes, the sun explodes and you wake up back where you started.
Are you allright?
At first, becoming stuck in a time loop is disorienting, frustrating,
a lifetime is reduced to a day, or even less.
And as a result, temporal progression becomes pointless repetition.
So, as I was saying, you just have to find peace.
But there is also something liberating about this.
For while it may seem that you only have a small window of time,
you in fact have an infinite amount of small windows of time.
You are still progressing, except time is now working to your advantage,
it becomes a familiar ally.
What's next?
You can learn what will happen and where.
You can re-do the same situations, the same encounters, again and again,
until you master them.
On top of that, as is often the case in time loops,
if you die before the timer runs out, the clock also resets,
So we can’t die?
No, the loop just starts over.
which means that mortality is no longer an issue.
It takes away one of our most fundamental fears and allows us to have some fun with it.
We can take bigger risks, or take the easy way out at the slightest inconvenience.
Playing the Outer Wilds lets you experience this for yourself.
Once I got used to the dynamics of the time loop,
I found that my whole perception of and attitude towards time and death, at least in the game,
changed as a result of it.
I was no longer worried about getting lost in deep caverns,
or about drifting away into the dark emptiness of space.
After all, whenever I got stuck, I could just let my oxygen run out, or crash into something,
and try again.
I started taking bigger risks.
I tried landing on a space station near the surface of the sun,
I skipped around on an icy comet
and made daring leaps I would never have made if I didn’t have the comfort of knowing that if anything went wrong,
I would always wake up safe and sound.
But, no matter the freedom gained by the various ways of breaking the natural progression of time,
it is never quite as complete and fulfilling as we would like.
Sooner or later, time always re-affirms its grip.
In time-loops, there is always the moment where you have learned all you can,
done everything you wanted to do,
where you have completely exhausted your small window.
It is the moment where you realize that you are still trapped,
that you haven’t escaped time’s limitations as you thought you did.
This becomes especially clear the moment the time loop is about to be broken,
and you realize that you are once again estranged from time,
that you are once again facing an unknown future,
and that there are once again real consequences to your actions.
The same goes for travelling back in time, which also quickly re-introduces the uncertainty of an unknown future,
and the impacts of individual actions, as changes made in the past inevitably lead to side-effects,
to different outcomes that weren’t intended.
All of it telling you that your perceived temporal freedom was little more than a fantasy.
This is also emphasized in stories like La Jetée, the quintessential time travel film that later inspired 12 Monkeys,
and the show Dark, which feature the ability to travel to the past,
yet also the inability to change it.
The characters in these stories all try to redirect the past into a different direction,
only to discover that their attempted intervention was precisely that which shaped the present they wanted to change.
Stories like these question if time travel would actually give us any meaningful agency,
or if it still binds us to the same limitations that are now experienced in a slightly more complicated way.
As the show Dark goes on, and its tinkering with the past becomes more complicated,
it also inadvertently shows how you can only maintain a non-linear timeline for so long
before losing its internal logic and running into paradoxes.
So, what are we to make of all this?
What is the purpose of time travel stories beyond being momentary fantasies of temporal freedom,
fantasies that inevitably end up as tragic reminders of how we are still imprisoned by time?
In my dream, time also slowly reclaimed its dominance.
At first, I was excited about being back in high school.
I saw all kinds of opportunities.
I could get another degree because I already had the knowledge from the one I previously did,
I could invest in bitcoin, Facebook, Instagram…
needless to say, I would never have to worry about money again.
I could use the same holidays to travel to new places.
In short, I could greatly expand my knowledge, my experiences.
But then, I came to realize that travelling back in time wasn’t just a potential to gain new things,
it was also a loss of the life I already had,
of the life I wasn’t willing to lose.
I thought I had gained freedom from time, when in fact it was merely the illusion of freedom.
I wasn’t able to move around like I was in the spatial dimensions,
I was still restricted to the exact same spot, and the only sense of freedom I had gained,
was gained from destroying what I had built within it.
I remember being overcome with a sense of panic,
and with the sudden urge to retrace my steps in the exact same way.
But was this even possible?
Would I still connect with the friends I got to know after high school?
Would my girlfriend still like me if I were to meet her again for the first time?
Could I pinpoint what actions of mine led to which outcomes?
And even if I could get my life back on the same track in general terms, then what about all the small things?
I thought of all those cherished moments that were so specific, so unique, so beautifully incidental…
and I realized I could not even begin to re-create those even if I did everything exactly the same.
I realized those moments were all gone, forever.
There was an obvious revelation here,
the revelation that despite the mistakes I had made, despite the time I had wasted,
despite all the things that could have been a little better, when it really comes down it,
I wouldn’t want to do anything differently.
Despite knowing the journey, and where it leads.
I embrace it.
And I welcome every moment of it.
And this, I think, is what time travel stories are truly about.
They are not so much about changing what is,
but more so about changing your perspective of what is.
They are about gaining new understanding.
About recontextualizing unresolved issues in our past,
about coming to terms with our temporal limitations, and in that process, finding closure, appreciation.
Time travel may not change the course of time, but it can change the traveler.
And we are all time travelers in a way.
We are continuously reflecting on the past based on new information, on new experiences, or emotions.
We alter memories by adding nostalgia, gratitude, or regret,
or by disconnecting once associated feelings, be they positive as we let go of anger, fear,
or negative as we lose our sense of joy, of playfulness.
Our past is ever evolving, always in motion, as we are in the present.
We know that time will continue to move forward, steadily, dependably.
But when used consciously, this can be a profound source of hope as well.
The great director Andrei Tarkovsky referred to filmmaking as sculpting in time,
but this is essentially true for our own lives too.
We may be bound to linear progression, but we can choose what to pay attention to.
We can choose what to hold on to, what to let go.
We can let time heal what was damaged, we can let it break down what must be rebuilt.
We can learn to trust that all the things that confuse us, worry us, that cause us to suffer,
will all make sense in the end.
That, for better or worse, it will all eventually fit into a greater understanding.
And we can let it make us aware in the present, make us notice the life that so easily passes us by,
as if we are already here for a second time,
and relish it.
We're all traveling through time together,
I just try to live every day as if I've deliberately back to this one day,
to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day.
The arrow of time pushes us ever forward, which can feel especially true when trying to decide on what film to watch next.
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They feature hundreds of carefully selected films that are definitely worth your time,
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