Plot synopsis
The day before Elise dies of old age, she approaches Richard, a young writer. She gives him a pocket watch and says four words: “Come back to me!” This intrigues him to research her and he discovers that around 1912 she was a beautiful and famous stage actress.
He asks his former philosophy teacher, the author of a book called Travels Through Time, if time travel is possible. He tells Richard that he once had limited success going back in time for a short period using self-hypnosis.
By using autosuggestion over and over again, he was able to dissociate himself entirely from the present. He says the essential factor is the location, which must be an old building from that era. All modern objects must be out of sight, as the recognition of them would pull him back to the present.
Richard experiments with this method until he perfects it and returns to 1912. He finds the young Elise and courts her, giving her his pocket watch, thus creating a time loop for that object.
They fall in love and all goes well until one day he finds some modern-day coins in his suit pocket. These remind him of his other life and cause him to slip back through time to the present.
He wakes up lying on the floor of the old hotel from where he departed. After many attempts, he cannot manage to return and eventually dies of a broken heart. The movie ends with his soul leaving his body and heading for the light, where he is reunited in a timeless dimension with the soul of Elise.
My comments
When time loops occur in a self-consistent universe, a time traveller trying to alter the past, intentionally or not, only causes the known history to take place, he is not able to change the course of history.
So, when Richard goes back in time, he seems to be changing people’s lives. But in fact, he is causing history to occur the way it needs to for his present world to exist.
Summary of time travel
So, both the past and future are fixed. Richard does go back and always goes back and always gives Elise the pocket watch. There can be no other timeline. The watch is caught in a time loop. However, Richard is not, as he returns at the point in time just after he left the fixed timeline and continues along it.
Category of time travel
Psychological: hypnosis.
Model of time
Closed past, closed future with a fixed timeline and a causal loop.
