As a trained historian, I sometimes get asked a hypothetical question: if I had access to a time machine that could take me to any historical era, which would I choose?  My answer is always simple: no.  When this produces confusion, evidently motivated by perceiving me to not be open to imaginary adventures, my equally curt follow up is to say that I can think of any number of factors at a given point in time that could lead to a painful death.  Of course, there is a multitude of ways we could meet an untimely demise in our own day, but I feel like today’s film, Timeline (2003), supports my position.  There is a Catholic argument against time travel, too, one that is alluded to in the movie, and that is to be satisfied with the here and now because that is the only period we can affect.  Going to the past, or future, is not real anyway, but there are emotional ways of living in the past.  God puts us where and when he does for a purpose, and a large part of Faith is figuring out that path.  Then again, He could yet put a human on this planet that could crack the code for this type of science fiction.  Until then, I pray that we learn to appreciate God now instead of worrying about anything else.

Speaking of being worried, I would also fret if, while driving in the middle of nowhere in our current Timeline, a man suddenly appeared.  This man is strangely dressed, and around his neck is a Jerusalem Cross pendant.  You know who else has that ancient Christian symbol tattooed on his arm?  This Catholic!  Anyway, the stranger, who dies later in a hospital, turns out to be an employee of a technology enterprise called ITC.  One of their security executives, Frank Gordon (Neal McDonough), informs the company’s founder, Robert Doniger (David Thewlis), that there has been an incident.  You see, ITC has invented a time traveling device, but the deceased underling is showing signs of medical maladies owing to the several jumps taken between past and present.  Where, and when, has he been?  A clue can be found in the next scene when we are introduced to an archaeological site in France called Castlegard.  The leader of the dig is Professor Edward A. Johnston (Billy Connolly).  He is joined there by his son, Chris Johnston (Paul Walker), who has zero interest in archaeology, but a great deal of interest in Kate Ericson (Frances O’Connor), a graduate student also working on uncovering the past in this location.  While discussing Chris’ sorry excuses for his rare visits to his dad, Professor Johnston ruminates on some of the ease of their discoveries.  It is with this in mind that he is traveling to ITC headquarters in the United States, the primary financial backer of the project in France.  The following day, Chris’ musing with another archaeologist and Medieval weapons enthusiast, André Marek (Gerard Butler), is interrupted by urgent calls for them to come to an exciting find.  At the base of a castle above their location they have gained access to a long sought after monastery.  André and Kate are lowered into it and before they are pulled back up, they stumble across a valuable set of documents and a modern lens to a pair of eyeglasses.  In analyzing these items, from a room in which none of their team has been, they come to the conclusion that the eyewear belongs to Professor Johnston.  The more startling revelation comes from the papers on which they make out their leader’s writing, asking for help from the year 1357.  Clearly, these are things that should not be possible, and they, too, decide to fly to the United States for answers.  In finally meeting with Robert, they learn about time travel, but they can only get to Castlegard in 1357 because that is the date their wormhole takes them.  Wormholes these days, am I right?  Anyway, something has happened with Professor Johnston and he is now stuck in the fourteenth century.  André, Chris, and Kate all demand to be allowed to bring back Professor Johnston, along with their French interpreter, Francois Dontelle (Rossif Sutherland) . . . who dies.  Robert allows this to happen, but wants Frank and a couple of former Marines to go with them for security.  Robert does not tell the academics some key facts, like the potential health risks or that there is another ITC employee in the past who has gone rogue.  Remember what I said in the introduction about the increased possibility of death with time travel?  Well, as soon as our group sorts themselves out from their jump into the past, they are attacked by English soldiers on horseback.  One of Frank’s men is shot with arrows while trying to return to the present.  As he takes his last breath, he arms a hand grenade, but it goes off after he gets back to the lab from whence he came.  The resulting explosion renders the machine inoperable.  Further, those in 1357 have only six hours to find Professor Johnston and escape before they, too, will be forced to remain in the fourteenth century.  So far, this sounds like a sensible bit of science fiction.  However, for the next hour or so there is a Scooby-Doo-esque set of misadventures with all of them getting captured, escaping, running, and then re-starting the whole process.  The main thing to take away from this unnecessarily elongated plot is that the English are bad and the French are good.  In the course of these events, André meets and falls in love with Lady Claire (Anna Friel), a French noblewoman who had been spying on the English.  Her capture and execution by the English, historically speaking, is what inspires the French to storm the castle and win what I guess is an important victory.  Yet, during the final battle, André frees her before she is killed.  Meanwhile, Chris and Kate lead the French through the monastery and into the battlements, taking the English by surprise.  Eventually, everyone is reunited, save for André, who has decided to remain in the fourteenth century.  As all these shenanigans have been going on, Robert and his team had been trying to fix the machine, getting it to eighty-one percent capacity, or whatever.  For reasons that are mysterious, though, he decides at the last minute to not continue the repair.  It is the sites’ resident physicist John Stern (Ethan Embry) who demands that they turn it on in time for his friends to come home.  They are replaced in the past by Robert, who had been about to destroy the machine before it could be used.  The last thing we see is Chris, Kate, and Professor Johnston visiting the grave of André and Lady Claire.

There is a lot in Timeline I did not understand, plot wise and in regards to the science involved.  I had read the book of the same name a couple years before the movie, which explains the minutiae of these details that cinema audiences probably would not enjoy.  Now that I have seen the film for the first time in over twenty years, I do not understand why I was so enthusiastic about it.  Maybe that is what I would do with a time machine: go back to 2003 and ask my younger self why I liked it, or recommended it to my mentor and renowned Civil Rights historian Ray Arsenault.  One of the biggest changes for me since then has been me growing in my Catholic faith.  A lesson that I have had to come to terms with is that belief in God teaches us to be in the present.  Studying history, like André, comes with a love of the past.  Still, as an academic subject, there is nothing wrong with enjoying learning about the past.  With André, it is all about the fourteenth century.  Still, he has some worrying things to say about that time, referring to it as a simpler time when people were honest and honorable.  There is a danger with this kind of nostalgia.  It can lead to one giving up on the present and living in a make-believe world about which a person can do nothing to affect.  Our God is the God of the living, and the past is dead.  I know there are so-called “living history” presentations, but their goal is informational, not to give one the impression that their time should be like our own.  People cling to events in our lives often because of regret.  Regret means wounds, and one of the steps to healing is by letting go and leaving them at the foot of the Cross.  They can resurface from time-to-time, but we can always repeat the process.  There is also a risk in holding on to happy memories that are no less tempting and can make one obsessive.  God brings us joy, and comfort, in the present.  We all do a little time traveling in our own lives and memories, but we need to always stay firmly grounded with God in the here and now.

I feel a little bad about this review of Timeline because I left out a great deal of the filler that is placed between the beginning and end.  Then again, it is really just that, filler, as they have to give the characters in the past something to do while they fix the machine in the present.  I can think of many other things you can do than to watch this movie.