English Version | Roteiro: Timeless books and movies

To read and watch today and forever.

To read today and forever

What do all of these books have in common? Time. It’s time that runs through these pages, ripping through centuries and trends. 

To watch today and forever

They’re movies about time. Let there be plenty of it, to watch them all. 

“In the future, more specifically in 2015, cars will have wings.” That was the way, back in the 80s, that we imagined the future, that distant place where everything was going to be supersonic - especially the cars, that were going to be the preferred way to not just move around… but to time travel. The idea was spread by Robert Zemeckis of the Back to the Future trilogy (1985, 1989, 1990), one of the biggest science fiction (and comedy) successes of all time. Time was always a darling theme in cinema that, through the decades, has been explored in many ways. In Sleeper (1973), Woody Allen imagined an anti-hero that, after being frozen, wakes up in a distant and utopic future. The director returned to this theme in Midnight in Paris (2011), where a young writer visiting Paris finds himself with a group of strangers that take him on a fantastic journey through the past. Gwyneth Paltrow never left the same city but, in Sliding Doors (1998), it's time that sets her fate in motion: if you’re able to board the subway train your life will have a completely different outcome than if they close before you’re able to get in. The movie is a sort of drama, reminiscent of About Time (2013), the story of a man that discovers he can time travel, and with that ability, he’s able to win over the woman of his dreams, and Il Était une Seconde Fois (2019), that follows the same premise. Animation fanatics have in ​Your Name (2006), from the Japanese Makoto Shinkai, a masterpiece about two teenagers that are able to switch bodies with one another and indie lovers will not want to miss Donnie Darko (2001), where Jake Gyllenhaal is encouraged by an (imaginary) giant rabbit to humiliate others… because the world is ending within a month. Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) is a classic from Francis Ford Coppola and shows us Kathleen Turner as a housewife that faints during a meeting with her former colleagues and wakes up as a teenager, with the possibility to change the outcome of her life. Classic is the same adjective that would be appropriate to describe Somewhere in Time (1980), where Christopher Reeve plays a writer that attempts to time travel in order to find a woman. Time After Time (1979) also deals with time travel, but with an entirely different goal: H. G. Wells hunts down Jack, the Ripper, that wanders off the Victorian Era into the 70s to handle “unfinished business”. The holiday season is the best time to catch up on everything we’ve left behind, so let us proceed with the list: Groundhog Day (1993) and Palm Springs (2020) are two movies with the same premise: one day that repeats itself ad aeternum, while Déjà Vu (2006) and Interstellar (2014) bring the best of science fiction, with some action and adventure peppered in. Memento (2000) is Christopher Nolan at his best - trying to sum it up would be a sin - and one of the biggest hits of the 2000s, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) is the adaptation of the homonymous tale by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the story of a man that is born old and gets younger as time goes by. If you have the… you guessed it, time, make sure to check out Twelve Monkeys (1995), The Hours (2002), Looper (2012), and Synchronic (2019) and then go by one of the many existing streaming platforms where its shows and documentaries about time are good enough to make the silver screen jealous.   

Originally published in the Time issue of Vogue Portugal, from December/January 2021/2022. Full credits and story on the print version.