Time travel stories always mess with your head, which is usually what makes them fascinating. And the idea of altering the past based on what one knows about the present (or altering the present based on what one might find out about the future) is always a tempting, yet typically forbidden, action when it comes to time machines. Throw in the occasional theory of certain things being inevitable, regardless of any alterations to the fabric of time, and you’re left with a complicated piece of conceptual cinema.
As if things weren’t already mind-boggling enough, Predestination takes the idea of traveling through time and adds another delusional dimension or two, leaving the viewer reeling with each new revelation. Written and directed by Australian filmmakers Michael and Peter Spierig, and based on a short story by Robert A Heinlein, Predestination stars Ethan Hawke as a Temporal Agent, a time-hopping crime fighter whose violin case is actually a time machine. His final mission is to travel to the past to prevent a terrorist attack by the Fizzle Bomber that did/will result in thousands of deaths in New York City in 1975.
Masquerading as a bartender, this agent strikes up a conversation with a customer (Sarah Snook) whose gender is rather ambiguous given his feminine features and masculine attire. This customer’s sexuality becomes more unclear when he reveals himself to be the Unmarried Mother, a women’s advice columnist. As the inebriation/comfort level rises, the customer reveals that he grew up as Jane, a female orphan who never quite fit in with the other girls. While being an outcast made adolescence difficult, it allows her to excel at recruitment tests for Space Corps, a program that sends young women into space to be glorified escorts for astronauts. She is disqualified, however, after a physical reveals a mysterious discovery about Jane.
She bounces back after falling in love with a strange older man, who inexplicably disappears from her life as quickly as he came into it, leaving her with more than just a broken heart. After the surprising birth of her daughter, Jane finds out exactly why she has always felt a little different from the other girls. It’s because she was born with female and male reproductive organs, and the female ones were damaged during childbirth. Her only option is to go with what she has left, and thus Jane becomes John, the Unmarried Mother. But gender confusion is the least of John’s identity issues.
Already suspecting that the lover that caused Jane to become John is also the Fizzle Bomber, the Temporal Agent sees an opportunity for he and John to find closure. He takes John back in time, to the day that Jane met her lover, so she can get her scorned lover’s revenge and take out the Fizzle Bomber with one bullet. This is the moment when things get really weird. While trying not to interact with his younger female self, John crosses paths with Jane. In the meantime, the Temporal Agent travels to the future to prevent the Fizzle Bomber’s attack. Though no bombs are detonated, things get figuratively explosive for Jane, John and the Temporal Agent as their intertwining fates become more and more apparent and inevitable. Though some aspects of their stories are somewhat predictable, it would be difficult to see any of the ultimate revelations coming, resulting in a story set on a continuous loop that transcends time, space and any other such concepts you can imagine.
With its film noir feel, Predestination recalls the likes of Gattaca (another Hawke sci-fi thriller) and Minority Report. But the way each characters story is woven together with the others is unlike any time travel story movie I’ve ever seen. Influenced more by Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy of the eternal return than by Doc Brown and Back to the Future (though I can’t help but wonder if it’s only a coincidence that the Temporal Bureau is headquartered in 1985, the year that Back to the Future was released), Predestination explores numerous philosophical ideas regarding reality and identity. It’s just as horrifying as it is heartwarming/breaking. And it definitely warrants multiple viewings just to grasp all that is going on.