Mr. Nobody (2009)"Every path is the right path. Everything could've been anything else.
And it would have just as much meaning." I can see why this film's been slowly building a cult of devoted fans since its release. It's a philosophical look at the way we live our lives and the choices that help to shape them wrapped inside a bold, magical, visual style that I might've lapped up myself when I was younger and a devotee to directors like Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. It belongs in a conversation with Wes Anderson and films like Bram Stoker's Dracula, except those films and filmmakers have a consistency. You immediately know who's at the helm. Mr. Nobody is visually stacked but there's nothing tying the vision together.
I could sum this movie up in four words: Young Adult Cloud Atlas. Mr. Nobody lives outside of time and whenever there's a difficult choice to be made, his story splits into alternate paths. He meets three women who all become his wife at various points in his lives. Some disappear only to return many years later. There's also his parents, who force him to make a life-altering decision with no time to consider. (That moment, which is the core of the film, is ridiculous in its set-up.) All of this allows the film to hop, skip and jump to different places in time and space, including the distant future and the planet Mars.
Frankly, I'm surprised the final product isn't very confusing, though it's highly schizophrenic. Funny that Cloud Atlas has 3 directors but plays like a single vision while this is a Frankenstein of ideas from one Jaco Van Dormael. Often, JVD isn't inspired in his choices. He was just trying to come up with a way to keep everything spinning. So we get WTF moments like a fantasy filmed in pseudo 8mm where Leto is a caveman protecting one of his wives from a bear. Whenever the story runs into a wall, they flood the set and Leto pops out of a bathtub where a man is waiting to shoot him dead. (Still not sure what this is about.)
Time and again, emotional points are undercut by camera magic. I never felt for the characters because the director was too busy adjusting his smoke and mirrors to let me get close to them. (It also hurts that Jared Leto's character is named Nemo, recalling a popular Pixar film every time somebody shouted his name.) Even Birdman, for all it's one-take moxie, would often just pick a spot and let the characters breathe in the frame. This isn't as fortunate, though some of the performances still manage to make an impression, especially Jared Leto.
RATING: * * 1/2