Mr. Nobody

2009 sci-fi thing

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An old guy--the last living mortal on earth actually--recalls his past lives as the universe decides whether or not it wants to collapse upon itself. Meanwhile, a Brazilian man boils an egg.

This is a hard one to classify. It definitely has sci-fi elements, but there's a philosophical bent, a layered romantic angle, and general life drama that makes you, for most of the proceedings, almost forget that it's a sci-fi story. There's multiple dimensions, all disjointed, so you've really got all these fragments of stories within stories within other stories that makes this whole thing very difficult to completely understand in one viewing. It's definitely the kind of film where you have to accept that you're going to feel it a lot more than understand it, at least entirely. Jaco Van Dormael, the writer and director, has an almost oppressive amount of ideas here and you could probably argue that the movie is either way too long or feels way too long, but I can't imagine anybody coming away from the experience of watching this without leaving with something. For the abstract scientists (is that a thing?) in the crowd, you've got The Big Crunch, chaos theory, string theory, and parallel universes, enough to make a Doctor Who fan spontaneously jizz in his pants. For people who wasted time and money getting philosophy degrees, there's all kinds of fun here as this tackles all sorts of meaning-of-life shit and, most obviously, how the choices we make or are forced to make in life all. For cinephiles, there are more than a few nods to great movies, including Harold and Maude, one of my personal favorites. It's either an homage or a rip-off. It's always hard to tell. You're not going to find another movie with this many layers, but you wonder if it's too much. It's like a beautifully-decorated but far too-thick cake. You admire it aesthetically and want to take yourself a bite but wonder, "How the heck am I going to open my jaws that wide?" It's a lot to digest, the kind of thing that begs for subsequent viewings, and while I was watching it, I was wondering if it was anything I'd be willing to dive into again. By the time it ended, however, I was making personal connections, the kind of thing that great art should really force you to do. It's certainly the kind of movie that holds up that proverbial mirror, more on a personal level than a societal one. It's one of those little handheld mirrors. Again, it's not that this movie isn't without its flaws. The performances sometimes suffer from that sort-of stilted stuff you get in sci-fi movies, maybe because a lot of what the audience is seeing and experiencing isn't something that the actor or actress saw during the shoot. Jared Leto, right before he decided to take a break from acting, ranges from very good to just sort of being there. I did enjoy his old guy cackle though. There's a spectacular moment of acting with Sarah Polley as one of Nemo's (I hate the main character's name, by the way) love interest where she shifts gears in an almost haunting way. It's a scene you really notice. I also liked what Rhys Ifans did, creating an almost cartoonish troubled father character. The futuristic stuff is subtle enough to not get in the way for people who aren't into that sort of thing while the science and philosophical mumbo-jumbo was easy enough for a dumb guy like me to understand enough. It's as dense as Cloud Atlas and just as pretentious, sometimes in a way that will make you want to gag.

Honestly, this is something I feel like I'd need to see again before determining if it's some flawed modern masterpiece or a tedious, weird, and pretentious misfire. I like what it has to say and it's just stuffed with all these magical moments--both of the realistic and surrealistic variety. A shot of fleet of helicopters depositing rectangular chunks of ocean is the sort of tiny detail that you'd think would matter more in a film. In something this size, it's just something minor that they probably spent a ton of money on for reasons that go over my head.

And I'd like to live in argyle world, at least for a little bit.

Oh, one more thing--that poster up there is awful. Any of these might be better, but it's hard to know which ones are real since people making their own posters is apparently a thing now:

Better. I like the minimalism. But it won't make sense until after you've seen the movie.

Also better, one that recalls one of the coolest visual tricks in the movie. 

Yuck.

My favorite, but I don't think this one is real. 

Wrong movie.