Plot synopsis
Stuart does some calculations and figures out that a time portal appears above the East River in New York for a few minutes every once in a while.
By jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, he can pass through it to a time one hundred years before. He finds his great, great grandfather, Leopold, and returns several times to follow him around with a small camera. Leopold is under great family pressure to announce a bride but hasn’t found a girl he would like to marry.
Eventually, Leopold spots Stuart and chases him to the Brooklyn Bridge. After a struggle, they both fall off it and pass through the portal together, reappearing in modern-day New York.
Leopold falls in love Stuart’s neighbour and former girlfriend, Kate. A week later, the portal opens up again and Stuart persuades Leopold to return to his past life.
Kate later follows them through the portal because Stuart sees her on one of the photos he has since developed and realises that her future is also in the past.
My comments
Note the predestination paradox here: Kate had to return to the past to marry Leopold, or Stuart would never have been born.
Summary of time travel
Stuart influenced the past when he was there. However, everything seemed to have converged by the time he returned to his own time.
As Kate had to return to the past, this was always going to happen, so the past is fixed. And Stuart also had to go there, otherwise Leopold would never have fallen in love with Kate.
Although Kate disappears from the timeline at the end of the film, this does not change the future timeline. As she was always destined to go back in time at that point, she never had a future beyond this point, so nothing was changed.
Category of time travel
Fantasy – finding portals.
Model of time
Closed past, closed future with a fixed timeline and a causal loop.
