‘Journey To The Beginning of Time’ or — The Art of Evolution?

In ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ a young C.I.A. officer tells the Congressman that the secret to arming the Afghans is in the correct weapon variation; the best variety of equipment that can best exploit their specific situation. This kept on entering my mind when I was watching Karel Zeman’s staggeringly gorgeous ‘Journey To The Beginning of Time’ (1955) where’s its not just the imaginative power of the special effects that’s intoxicating but the dazzling variety of the different approaches — large-scale models, stop-motion animation, foreground and background miniatures, collage, etc, etc — Zeman employs to take us back the prehistoric world. It’s a cavalcade of beauty and technical fidelity.

The story is as simple as can be: four boys, with the passionate dream of seeing real-life dinosaurs, row their boat up a river which takes them further back in time the further they go. And that’s basically it plot-wise with the film having the basic structure of walking through a gorgeous diorama or museum exhibit where we can gaze in wonder at the “scientifically accurate” creatures that pass by us.

Yet Zeman, also being a superb story-telling, does start to inject some drama, usually in the form of one of the boys wandering off so he can get into a scrape, which gives ‘JTTBOT’ some real tension and he certainly knows how to nail that childlike combination of awe-and-fear when encountering dinosaurs. There’s a moment halfway through that’s quite chilling, and also funny as hell, when their boat has a “mishap” with a dinosaur, leaving them committed to their quest to the star of time.

So where does all this go? To the inevitable, to the final point where one can go no further lifting the entire experience into the realm of the abstract and ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ territory. This is, quite simply, some kids travelling back to the beginning of time so it leads where it will lead.

‘JTTBOT’ is wonderful and essential viewing for anyone who ever longed to go off and find dinosaurs or walk through the Precambrian. Zeman presents this world to us in spectacular fashion, not only through fantastical images but also knowing when to slow the pacing down so we can take in the scale and scope of his imaginative reach. The sequence of the thunder storm is an incredible example of this with the best comparison being the work of Terrence Malick and that sensation of limitless awe in the natural world. This might be rational science but gives the thrill of the transcendent.

‘Journey To The Beginning of Time’ is educational (for its time), captivating, beautiful and seeming to consist purely of charm. And you might not see so much perfectly crafted beauty all year.