Needle In A Timestack (film review).
‘Needle In A Timestack’ is based on a story by popular Science Fiction author Robert Silverberg. Though he has been a prolific author for the last seventy years (!), little of his work has been filmed. The only major exception is ‘The Bicentennial Man’, based on ‘The Positronic Man’.
This film has a jazzy score, a diverse cast and a touch of food porn. It is divided into three sections, representing three timelines, centred on Nick, Janine and Tom. Each section starts in the boardroom of a wealthy corporation, where somebody gives a talk that sounds like double-talk. In the middle, a ‘time shift’ or ‘phase’, as the film seems to use the terms interchangeably, changes reality. Apparently, changing timelines is ‘time crime’, but that seems to happen anyway. Nick thinks someone is specifically trying to change his timeline.
Throughout the film, people’s lives get screwed up in much the same way they do when time shifts occur. Things get entangled and one character says, ‘We can’t change the past; we can just clean up the future a little bit.’ It sounds a bit like relationship counselling. People also tend to speak in aphorisms, such as that one or ‘Happiness is the only thing more fleeting than time’.
Nick signs up for a service called ‘Past Protect’, which presumably saves your memories from the current timeline in case a time shift changes something. Oddly, memories from one timeline last for a few hours after the timelines shift, but gradually fade. ‘Past Protect’ has somehow lost most of Nick’s memories, although he can remember Janine for a while. The idea creates situations similar to those in ‘Total Recall’, though in this film Nick is looking for someone to be with him forever in love rather than trying to have an adventure.
The mechanism for the time travel is not clear, though the body or a body, does go back in time rather than merely inhabiting the person’s earlier body. Not surprisingly, Nick’s attempts to ‘fix’ things have a somewhat different effect. One nice touch is a close-up of Nick’s hand in each segment, revealing his different marital status.
Released in theatres on 15 October 2021.
Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4), or 6/10.
Mark R. Leeper
Editor’s note: This review was found in the pending section of Mark R. Leeper’s SFcrowsnest reviewer account during a site tidy-up. Sadly, Mark passed away before he had the chance to give it his final edit and press publish. As one of the Internet’s longest-running film reviewers, Mark left behind an extraordinary body of writing, full of curiosity, precision, dry wit and a lifelong love of cinema. We are publishing this piece in that spirit, as one more small dispatch from a voice much missed by readers, friends and fellow travellers in Science Fiction fandom.