River of
Time
by Robert Fox
The Cinema Guild, Inc., NY, USA, 2006
DVD, 29 mins., color
Sales, $195; rental, $55
Distributors website: http://www.cinemaguild.com.
Reviewed by Andrea Dahlberg
andrea.dahlberg@bakernet.com
Igor Novikov is a Russian astrophysicist
living in Denmark with a gift for communicating
complex theories of time to a broad, non-specialist
audience. In this short film he draws
the viewer in by placing his theories
in a very personal context, describing
how he grew up in Russia and became fascinated
by a complex theoretical world that allowed
him to escape the social world of Stalinist
Russia where his mother was sent to the
gulag and his father vanished. The film
follows much the same trajectory as it
moves from biography into the increasingly
abstract world of time. Archive footage
from the U.S., Russia, Germany and Denmark
is used to illustrate the development
of Novikov's theory that time is cyclical
and that time travel is possible but only
back to the point at which the 'time machine'
or the technology that enabled it came
into existence.
The film is a fascinating introduction
to the subject because of Novikov's ability
to communicate and his willingness to
situate his work in the context of his
personal life. He becomes a kind of personal
guide for the viewer. The film also succeeds
visually because of the use of archive
footage. While the film is an excellent,
very basic introduction to this abstract
subject that defies most aspects of our
everyday experience of life, it is not
good at showing how the concepts it presents
fit together. For example, Novikov describes
how (theoretically) one could travel back
in time to meet one's mother as a child
of 4 years old if the technology which
enabled this to happen had existed at
the time the person's mother was 4 years
old. At another point in the film he states
that matter cannot change such that present
matter is indeed shaped by matter past.
The film does not show how these concepts
are related, and the question of how one
could meet one's mother aged 4 if she
herself had not been through the time
machine experience is raised and left
unanswered. The problem here is not that
the film leaves questions unanswered (this
is obviously inevitable with such a subject)
but that Novikov is such an excellent
and willing communicator that there is
no doubt that he would have been able
to answer such questions (and probably
did) in terms simple enough for the most
unsophisticated viewer. One is left with
the impression that the problem is a consequence
of the way the film was edited. A decision
was taken to focus on the presentation
of certain concepts and not to go on to
explain a few of the most elementary relationships
between them.
Nevertheless, the film is a fascinating
and accessible introduction to a subject
that confounds our sense experience of
the world.