7 Splinters of Time

written and directed by Gabriel Judet-Weinshel

• Release: 3 March 2018
• Format: Feature Film
• Genres: Science Fiction, Mystery and Crime
• Audience: Adults
• Content: Definite Time Travel
• Original Language: English

Alise: You died ten years ago.
Darius: I was born ten years ago.

VARIANTS

2 English variants

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

• Circa AD 1960 to 1969: the time of young Daniel and Alisa
• Circa AD 1970 to 1999: most of the film appears to be set in the late 70s or early 80s
• Circa AD 2000 to 2099: Darius murders the librarian on 2 May 2000, and he might have come from 11 years in the future to do that

Time Travel Methods

• Time Rifts: All over the world are these Omphalos points, and you can use them if you have the right technology. In the movie, the “right technology” is Darius’s tattoo, which allows him to think of the time and place he wants to go, and the Omphalos point takes him there through a kind of tunnel. It’s organic.

Themes

• Fix History!: Fyodor Wax’s original plan was to fix past wrongs in history.
• Fix Your Time Travel Screw-Up!: Both of Darius’s trips involve trying to fix previous screw-ups.
• Kill the Despot/Psychopath/Etc. (excluding Hitler): John’s mission was to kill an arms dealer.
• Nude Travel: In addition to landing nude, travelers are also curled up like Arnold in The Terminator, but with fewer lightning special FX.
• Object Meets Self with Bizaare Consequences: Darius splinters when he meets himself.
• Retrocide: Darius unintentionally kills his younger self while saving Alisa.
• Save “Lois”!: Darius wants to save his sweetheart, Alisa.
• Self-Defeating Acts: The splintering is caused by the paradox that when Darius goes back to save Alisa, he ends up killing him younger self, which implies that he will not be around to come back to do all that.
• Self-Visitation: Darius and the other splinters are near their younger self. We don’t count this as meeting multiple selves because the different splinter parts merely came from the same origin, but are not earlier or later versions of themselves.
• Time Travel Sickness, Injuries, and Mixed-Up Body Parts: loss of memory, psychosis, and splintering into “about seven” parts

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

1. From an unspecified place and time at an unknown time ⋙ to the middle of a lonely stretch of Route 80, shortly before 11 November 1967. Round trip. Note: Luka comes back to 1967 on an assassination mission, but his landing spot causes Daniel to swerve, killing Alisa.
2. From an unspecified place and time at an unknown time ⋙ to a field near that same bit of Route 80, about the same time as Luka’s first jump. Note: Daniel comes back to try to save Alisa, which he does by pulling Luka out of the road, but the resulting paradox from the self-defeating act causes Daniel to splinter into about seven parts, one of whom is Darius. Neither those parts nor Luka return from their mission.
3. From a mysterious Omphalus point, at an inconsistent time ⋙ to the middle of an unspecified road not far from the Babylon Hotel, 2 May 2000. Note: Darius goes to the year 2000 to kill the discoverer of the mysterious time travel points before he and his people can make any jumps. Luka tells Darius that he is going back 11 years, which would make the starting time about 2011, but I don’t know how they got there from their time in the rest of the film (the late 70s or early 80s).