Joy H. Books

TIME-TRAVELING SPOILERS AHEAD

If you could choose any day to relive over and over, which one would you pick? It’s a question chock-full of possibilities, and one that’s fun to ponder.

For Mark, he’d probably relive something totally awesome. Maybe the day he had a cake-filled, laser-tag birthday party or that one time his family went to Six Flags or maybe the summer he went on a road trip with a loved one and ate too much candy in the car.

For Mark, something outrageously fun or nostalgic wouldn’t be so bad for a Groundhog Day-esque time loop. Who wouldn’t want to relive an awesome afternoon at the beach or have an endless string of happy Christmases? What Mark hadn’t counted on, however, was getting stuck in a hot, lonely, kind-of-terrible, long dog-day of summer. Over and over again.

And, as seems Mark’s luck, there may be no way out.

Thrown for a Loop

Of course, there are some benefits to being the only guy in a day on endless repeat. You can do some cool magic tricks, like predict what people are going to say. You can help prevent some minor disasters, like preventing a man from getting bird poop on his coat or the neighborhood jogger from forgetting their water bottle. And there’s no real consequences past 24 hours, so if you’d like to dig into a massive breakfast of milkshakes and burgers, who cares? What does it matter if you borrow a forklift and drive it through town like a total boss? A day that resets at midnight opens up some fun possibilities.

Keep your eyes open, and you can become an almost-Batman, correcting minor flaws in the day and indulging in harmless whims. For Mark, he doesn’t have to deal with the summer school he was supposed to attend. He can try to impress that girl he met at the swimming pool through some awkward trial and error. And (just maybe), Mark can help his dad and mom salvage their marriage.

The only problem? While Mark makes adjustments and tries over and over to perfect his infinite day, nothing changes deeply. He finds himself growing increasingly bored and increasingly aware of his own loneliness. In a day that was supposed to be “fixed” through time and effort, it feels anything but perfect.

That is–until one girl seems to be acting just like him, running against the current of normal life (and disregarding traffic laws like there’s no tomorrow). For the first time in what feels like forever, Mark finally has someone to figure out this mystery with. Her name is Margaret, and she’s been searching for something, too.

She just won’t tell Mark what it is.

Draw up a Map

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things is a fresh take on a coming-of-age summer romance/ Groundhog Day plot. While the expected themes of young love, exploration, and carpe diem are served up like so many breakfast shakes-and-burgers, the film is also willing to plunge a little deeper.

When exploring an iteration of their endless day together, Margaret shares with Mark that she’s always been fascinated with physics, and that she’d love to be a NASA mission specialist. Chess (on maximum difficulty) is her idea of letting loose. And, unlike other girls, her dream growing up was to find the “fourth dimension.” She explains that while 3D space is able to be conceptualized, scientists have been looking for a way to illustrate the forth dimension. And though Margaret’s not sure what the fourth dimension is, but she knows it reflects meaning in the world.

That’s what gives her the idea. If they’re going to be stuck in a long, endless summer day, they could start taking notes. They’ve relived the day enough to notice some pretty meaningful and special moments. They could write them down, draw them on a map, catalogue them for future generations.

In other words, in all their spare time, Mark and Margaret could make a map of tiny perfect things. It’s not like they have anything better to do.

A Catalogue of LIfe

Margaret and Mark find that wasting the day together doesn’t feel like a waste at all. With renewed purpose, they wake up each morning on a real-life scavenger hunt to add another “tiny perfect thing” to the map that Mark is drafting up of their city.

On one street corner, they may stumble across a meet-cute between star-crossed lovers. A new spot’s added on the map. Head on over to the bakery, and there’s the world’s most perfect croissant just out of the oven. Check. Maybe there’s a whole field of four-leaf clovers by the construction site. One more for the list.

And a missing dog is reunited with its owner. And the sunlight filtering through the trees creates a golden glow across the highway. And a lost balloon lands in front of someone having a bad day. And two lonely teenagers discover friendship.

Checkety-check-check.

In The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, Margaret and Mark get a four-dimensional view of 24 hours. They explore it from every angle, investigate it from every side. The more they look, the more moments of tiny miracles they capture in Mark’s sketchbook. They plot the memories of gratitude on a hand drawn map of the city and, in the process, begin to see the hazy outline of meaning against the background of Ordinary Life.

Map’s End

The only issue? After reliving the day over and over again, seizing its magic, Mark begins to wonder what his life would be like if he lived like this every single day. That is impossible, of course, since the whole timey-whimey, physics-bending, Groundhog Day-worthy anamoly they’re trapped in doesn’t seem to be fixing itself anytime soon.

He wonders–am I causing time to loop endlessly?

Maybe time will fix itself if he can “perfect” the day. Maybe there’s a lesson he needs to learn, like Bill Murray’s character, Phil. Maybe he just needs to give the fabric of time a little shove, just unsnarl some quantum dimensional knot, and everything will be set right.

What Mark doesn’t consider is that Margaret is the one unintentionally trapping their world in endless repetition. It’s her who’s unable to face a grief so deep and frightening, time freezes in crystalline protection around her. All the time spent sketching tiny daily miracles has distracted Margaret from a big, deep pain that feels unerasable. A pain that makes her feel like life beyond the day she’s trapped in is no life at all.

That is, until someone shares with her that:

it’s true that we’re losing time every day, all the time, until one day it’s all gone. But you’re gaining it, too. Every second, perfect moments, one after the other, until, by the end, you have your whole life. You have everything. And it costs you everything. But it’s worth it. I promise that it’s worth it.

And that question of “is it worth it?” is the true story behind Margaret and Mark’s adventure.

Conclusion

By the time you reach the end of The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, you’ll probably have giggled, gasped, and definitely reached for the Kleenex. It’s a summer-y, coming-of-age movie that sinks deeper than the average Hollywood flick.

It’s a story that reminds us of the raw reality we all grow up to see:

a. there are beautiful miracles in our everyday that, when
we see them, are pretty awesome

b. there are seasons of grief and cold sadness that make
us feel trapped and invisible

As Margaret (and Mark) realize, the tiny perfect moments are what add up to our life–and it includes moments of sadness and brokenness, too. Life, after all, isn’t some “thing” that unwinds like a spool of thread, unpartitionable and seamless. When we stop to think about it, we realize that life are all the tiny moments, every second of time, stacked up together to form our lives. It’s a beautiful thing, and a reminder to open our eyes, wake up, and live.

At the end of the (Groundhog) day, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things stuck with me because I realized, Is there beauty in the world that I might be missing? Not in a as-cheesy-as-a-plate-of-nachos way . . .

. . . But in a God-created-the-world-and-I-believe-He’s-still-here-and-loving-people-and-working kind of way. The kind that dares to defy my built-in programming of expecting the worse. Or, in the midst of pain, to believe the lie that it will last forever.

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things is far from perfect. What movie could capture the reality of God’s beauty and grace or the complicated nature of suffering, growing-up, and grieving? But Margaret and Mark’s story does remind us to stop and look. To embrace the complicated emotions that life brings, not numb them with escapism. To find the tiny, perfect miracles hiding in plain sight, and to map our lives against the contours of the reality of Jesus’s amazing love for us.

And maybe to eat ice cream like there’s no tomorrow. ⏳🍦

Credits

Cover image: from Variety, edited in Canva