#710 – The End of Eternity (1976)

he End of Eternity (1976)

Film review #710

Director: András Rajnai

SYNOPSIS: From the “Time Channel,” a group of immortals control the development of humanity by carefully studying and altering certain events. Thomas Harlan works as a technician for the Time Tunnel, and falls in love with a mysterious woman who is from a time period that has blocked off access to the time travellers, and uncovers the dark truth of the organisation…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: The End of Eternity is a 1976 sci-fi TV movie based on the 1955 novel of the same name by Isaac Asimov. The film opens up in explosive fashion, with a literal explosion of some sci-fi setting and people dying as the title appears. We next see Thomas Harlan, a technician for a group of immortals who control the Time Tunnel that they use to travel through time and make careful changes to history for the better. Harlan trains another man named Cooper to travel to the 21st century, and this provides us with an opportunity to learn about the setting and world. I have not read Asimov’s original novel that this film is based on, but I suspect that it explains things a lot better than this film does: there is a lot of information t9o be delivered about the mechanics of time travel, the different eras, the society of the immortals, and so on. A novel gives you the space to tell this, but this film can only get so much across, and I was very quickly lost over what was happening. Basically, a woman from a time period which has managed to close itself off to the time travellers and their interference arrives, and Harlan falls in love with her. This is a part of his boss’s plan to get information on how her society was able to block time travellers, and when they imprison her in the far off future, Harlan has to try and get her back. It’s a simple enough story I suppose, but as mentioned, the ways it’s explained is very opaque. This is compounded by the short runtime of eighty minutes, and a very off pacing that doesn’t build up much suspense or tension: it feels like every time there’s something new happening, the film needs more time to explain it, and it brings every thing to a standstill. Maybe it flows nicer if you can listen and understand the language rather than watching with subtitles, but I feel that might not be enough.

The visual style of this film consists of nearly every scene being set in front of a greenscreen, with all sorts of weird shapes and colours designed to “look” futuristic. There’s not much consistency or specifics to give us an idea of what this setting is like or how it operates; it’s just general sci-fi fluff. You can tell there’s an interesting story behind The End of Eternity, but the complex plot device of time travel just isn’t explained very well here. With settings that all look the same and many scenes of just standing around and talking, it often feels like the story doesn’t go anywhere, and nothing is built up or established well enough to maintain your attention. An interesting take on sci-fi from Hungarian TV, but poorly executed in terms of pacing and production.