Predestination – 2014 – Time travel gone confusing

I really like films that challenge my intellect. There are few times I’m confused by them even if the message isn’t clear. Often you can make philosophical och metaphorical conclusions and by such means “get” the movie. Particular hard to understand are time travel flicks. Especially if the time travel occurs back and forth where the characters meets themselves in the past. Or in the future for that matter. Predestination takes this one step further than all other time travel flick I have seen. I’m not sure who’s who at the end of the movie and I’m totally confused. What was the meaning of this film?

The main story is about this man who works for a government agency. It’s not an ordinary agency and they deal with time travel. The idea is to prevent crime before it happens. That seems simple enough but it really isn’t. What will really happen if the bomb don’t go off? Of course it will alter the future. Hence jeopardizing the entire existence of out planet. But in this films universe it seems to work. Anyway. This man is obsessed by stopping and/or catching “the fizzle bomber”. This terrorist, or what ever you should call him, is responsible for a large explosion that cost tens of thousands of lives. Yet, it’s not that simple to catch him and an authorization from the government is needed for the time jump.

I’m comfortable with the story so far. I get it and it’s not that complex even if it’s somewhat paradoxical. But then he meets this guy, who turns out to be born a woman, who turns out to be an ex hermaphrodite… Sounds like David Lynch meeting Monty Python but I follow so far. It’s a really interesting story, compelling too and quite unusual. Then the two of them leave an unauthorized time travel and after that I’m kind of lost. They start to meet themselves and have dialogs with their former selves, their younger versions. At this point I don’t know who’s in what time period anymore and I can’t really understand the timeline. It’s just too confusing.

I like time travel movies and I find most of them to be paradoxical, But this one I can’t make out. I don’t know if the main character loses his mind (there are clues supporting this theory) or he, himself are the bad guy in the end. If so, he’s on an eternal struggle with himself. The title also hints that the order of events are inevitable. This would mean that time itself doesn’t exist and that everything’s just looping. That would be the true predestination.