'Not every paradox," says a character in "Predestination," "can be paradoctored." Or, as another line of dialogue puts it, "It's complicated."
And maybe a bit contrived. Be that as it may, after all the narrative threads have been connected and the knots untied in Michael and Peter Spierig's spirited but prolix adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 story "All You Zombies," what remains is a messy but affecting parable about fate, gender, and identity. And time, which combines the three.
Ethan Hawke plays — well, that's the point. Who is he? In the credits he is called the Bartender, and he works as a "temporal agent" for some mystery organization that sorts out the past. After (or before? In a film like this, the meaning of "flashback" and "flash-forward" is hard to figure) botching a case and incurring serious injuries, he finds himself back in the "present" of an alternate history in which time travel was discovered in 1981. There he's treated and sent back on the inevitable final mission.
This takes him to a generic 1970s (can there be anachronisms in a time-travel movie?) where he serves drinks at a New York gin joint. Engaging in hard-boiled dialogue with a barfly who calls himself "The Unwed Mother" (Sarah Snook), he encourages the customer to tell the story of his life. It's a doozie, involving an orphanage, a space travel agency with costumes and decor reminiscent of "2001," unwed motherhood, a broken heart, transgender surgery . . .
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All of which is more or less faithful to Heinlein's story, which preceded even Chris Marker's "La Jetée" (1962) as an early version of the now familiar convention of time-travelers on a mission to undo past catastrophes. To make the story more, well, timely, the filmmakers have added a terrorist menace called the "Fizzle Bomber," a cross between Ted Kaczynski and Osama bin Laden. This thriller element injects some suspense, but also requires more exposition in an already dialogue- and voice-over-heavy narrative, though Hawke's gravelly voice adds a nice noir-ish touch.
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His subtle performance also draws attention away from the creaky plot machinery, as does the Spierig brothers' eye for the seemingly throwaway but pregnant detail. Heinlein's 1960s countercultural must-read novel "Stranger in a Strange Land," long overdue itself for a screen adaptation, makes a brief appearance. And a shot of the Bartender with men's and women's rooms signs in the background is one of many fleet, metaphorical images that elevate the tale to the level of poetry.
Which probably is what all stories like this aspire to, time travel being a key to the mystery of the chicken and egg paradox, the Oedipal complex, the nature of selfhood, and the essence of tragedy. Full of temporal double and triple entendres, combining the themes of William Blake's "The Mental Traveler" and Robert Zemeckis's "Back to the Future," "Predestination" is time well spent.
Watch the trailer:
Peter Keough can be reached at petervkeough@gmail.com.