Weekend: Movie Review: Deja Vu

My wife Angie and I watched the Denzel Washington movie Deja Vu this past week. I enjoyed it--especially the concept.

Stop reading now if you haven't seen the movie yet!!!

But what seemed to be fundamental contradictions at the end ruined it for me a little bit.

What makes the movie a bit of a cliffhanger is that up until near the end, it seems theoretically possible that all their efforts to alter the past have only created the past. So Denzel's fingerprints are all over the leading lady's house even though he wore gloves the whole time. He has left a message for himself there from the past. His own blood is all over the place.

AND she is dead. She washed up moments before the explosion and died about two hours before the explosion.

In other words, for the movie to be consistent, it seems to me that anything he has done in the past has to have resulted in exactly this train of events, including her death. The movie writer has blurred together the changed and the unchanged past.

The altered past is already in place in the movie before the first alteration of history takes place, namely, when they send a note back that leads to the death of Denzel's partner. His partner's car is already at the dock in result of sending the note back before they send the note.

So when does the movie first contradict? I think the first contradiction is the fact that she died two hours before the explosion but she is on her own answering machine after she would have already been dead.

It majorly contradicts from the moment Denzel saves the girl, two hours before the explosion. Many of the things they do subsequent to that point create items he has already observed (like the bloody clothing that is actually from him). But yet she is alive, contrary to things he has already observed.

Will time travel ever be possible?
Very unlikely. Why? Because if it will, then it very likely already has. And if it has, the anachronisms have gone completely unnoticed. We might attribute angels, miracles, etc. to travelers from the future, sure. But these visitors have apparently done such a good job that no obvious incidences have become known--all those "take over the world" types we read about in comic books and movies.

Here are some of my thoughts:
1. If one could pop into the past (e.g., through a fold in time like in Deju Vu), then I assume any changes made would create a whole new future. If people in the future do this, it seems unlikely that we would be on the first run through. Yet where are the clear anachronisms?

2. I wonder if in fact time even exists. I know change does and motion does. Maybe a person could reverse all the changes. But unless you did this somewhere in a vacuum, in space somewhere, it seems to me you would seriously mess up everything that had been in that space in the past.

P.S. How do they beam notes and him to specific locations? How can he shine back through the screen when they send the note and him through the other dohicky? The science of the movie really seemed hokey to me.