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| One visually engaging poster for Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody |
I had been attracted to this film since its premiere some years ago, but only got to it now. I had build some expectations for it, since it seemed promising, based on its trailer, praise and unusual story.
The plot of Mr. Nobody is hard to explain, but its main character is Nemo Nobody, who is a 100-something year old man, the last mortal alive almost a hundred years into the future, when people have gained 'quasi-immortality'. He looks back on his life, as he's interviewed by a younger man. His life counts several lives, it seems, or several life-spans, because he sees possibilities of alternate versions of his life, - versions, however, that he has also lived, somehow. A key point in his life is at his parents' divorce in his childhood, when he is asked to choose between them. Later highlights are his different loves, and different deaths.
The first about 15 minutes of the film revels in just fucking with its audience by throwing 'bones' every which way; lead actor Jared Leto (Requiem for a Dream (2000)) dies in different ways; we are in the past; we are in the future, we are everywhere. Nothing makes sense. What is this, we think. Will it ever make sense?
The answer is: Sort of, a bit.
The film then goes on to tell its stories of the life of Nemo Nobody, going back and forth, but mostly ahead from childhood through first love and sex to later married life, a mentally unstable wife etc. etc. Unfortunately, I was fast bored with the film, and I really wanted to like it, but just couldn't.
Mr. Nobody has many problems. One is its outset ambition to contain everything in life in it. It seems like it wants to be a 2 ½ hour Bible. It's too much. There's no softer way to say it.
But probably its main problem is its unengaging characters. The film is littered with fickle female characters that never really charm or attain likability or much interest. But the film's main focus, of course, is Nemo, who is mostly in the form of Leto. Jared Leto is all over the place as Nemo Nobody:
He is a floating hobo.
He has about 100 different hairstyles.
But above all, he stares existentially at us in countless existential close-ups from existentialist Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael (Lumière and Company, documentary (1995)), who seems almost existentially obsessed with the actor/rock star's face.
This last problem marks my biggest issue with the film; not so much Leto's face, but that Nobody seems so hell-bent on being existentially profound in almost every single minute it runs. As if it wants us to see it as some kind of epiphany from start to finish. It's a bit like that guy at the party who is a bit too 'smart' for his own well-being; who has seen this documentary/read this article/heard this incredible speech, and now just can't shut up about it. And why can't we all just see and understand what he has seen? Experience is not that easy to share with anyone else, Dormael.
I know that this may seem horribly skeptical and unfair towards the film, which many people really love, but I was bored and annoyed with it through most of its long runtime.
The details:
Lovers of Mr. Nobody will especially hate my use of the next adjective that I will tentatively paste to a corner of the film:
Pretentious.
Not as pretentious as another awful time-twirler, Wong Kar Wai's 2046 (2004), but still a film that really requires patience to get through. As when, for no apparent reason, this guy shows up and is in all earnestness a doctor for Mr. Nobody:
It is reminiscent of films like Darren Aronofsky's airy, failed The Fountain (2006) and the hugely popular The Butterfly Effect (2004). But the better entry into this love-and-the-relativity-of-time sci-fi-sub-genre, (if we may call it that), would be Michel Gondry's excellent Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).
On the positive side, speaking for Mr. Nobody, it does have striking visuals, and is an unusual, big production of a pretty ludicrous mix of ideas. It is always incredible when someone decides to pour this kind of money into something as strange as Mr. Nobody, (and obviously to most of us with no real chance to make almost anything of it back again), but at least Dormael has put all that money to obvious use here.
The film also has a lot of good music, although I was sometimes sorry to hear such good music in such a dubious film. Its use of Mr. Sandman by many different artists is quite clever.
One positive experience I made from the film was that divorcées really should never allow themselves to ask their child to choose between them. They have fucked up, and they should have to make this impossible decision of where the child goes, and almost invariably make the wrong one, and suffer all the beatings for that decision from then on. The child is not the responsible party and therefore shouldn't get this unbearable responsibility.
Nobody was Dormael's third feature. He has not been hired since. Perhaps because Nobody, although receiving praise and recognition, was, financially speaking, a black hole. The future will show, using a very poor pun, if Mr.Nobody was the film that made Jaco Van Dormael a nobody.
Mr. Nobody will stretch your concentration with a plot about the relativity of time and every reality strand's inherent perfection. If you are into experimental science fiction and time-related philosophy, you may love it. But I found it a highly trying time to get through.
Related posts:
2046 (2004) or, A Shell of Art
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Budget: 47 mil. $
Box office: Less than a tenth of its budget
= Financial disaster
What do you think of Mr. Nobody?
Can you name other unusual sci-fi movies that work better than this?
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