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168. MR. NOBODY (2009)
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“Oh, my God, and when you got up in the morning, there was the sun in the same position you saw it the day before—beginning to rise from the graveyard back of the street, as though its nightly custodians were the fleshless dead—seen through the town’s invariable smoke haze, it was a ruddy biscuit, round and red, when it just might as well have been square or shaped like a worm—anything might have been anything else and had just as much meaning to it…”–Tennessee Williams, The Malediction
DIRECTED BY: Jaco Van Dormael
FEATURING: Jared Leto, Toby Regbo, Sarah Polley, Natasha Little, Rhys Ifans, Juno Temple, Diane Kruger, Linh Dan Pham
PLOT: In 2092, after all disease has been conquered through cellular regeneration technology, 119-year old Nemo Nobody is the last mortal man left in the world. He recounts his life story to a psychiatrist and a reporter, but his memories are wildly inconsistent and incompatible, and at times fantastic and impossible. In his confused recollections he is married to three different women, with multiple outcomes depending on choices that he makes in the course of his life; but which is his real story?
BACKGROUND:
- The genesis of this story came from Jaco Van Dormael’s 1982 short film “È pericoloso sporgersi,” about a boy who must make an “impossible” choice between living with his mother or with his father.
- According to Van Dormael the script took seven years to write, working about five and a half hours a day, every day.
- Van Dormael published the Mr. Nobodoy screenplay
(in French) in 2006, one year before production began and three years before the film was completed.
- Despite being made in 2009, the movie was not released in the U.S. until 2013, and then only in an attempt to capitalize on the Oscar buzz surrounding Jared Leto’s performance in Dallas Buyers Club.
- Leto temporarily retired from acting after Mr. Nobody, spending the next four years focusing on his band Thirty Seconds to Mars.
- Mr. Nobody’s first name, Nemo, means “nobody” in Latin.
- The movie is full of visual tricks and illusions, some of which are so subtle that they’re easy to miss. For example, watch for a scene where Nemo enters a bathroom then focuses on his own image in a mirror. When he turns around and the camera follows him back out of the room, we now see the perspective as if we had passed through the mirror; the reflection seamlessly swaps places with the real world.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Mr. Nobody‘s essential image is of branching, criss-crossing railroad tracks; if you want something with a little more surreal zip, however, check out the scenes of a fleet of helicopters delivering slices of ocean, slowly lowering them into place on the horizon.
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Essentially an experimental narrative film disguised as a big-budget science fiction extravaganza, Mr. Nobody, an epic fantasia in which the protagonist lives a dozen different lives and a dozen different realities, was doomed to be a cult film from its inception. Even with a healthy dose of romantic sentimentality and whimsy a la Jean-Pierre Jeunet, it is far too rare and peculiar a dish for mainstream tastes. The opening is confusing, the moral ambiguous, and reality won’t sit still; it’s got unicorns, godlike children, helicopters delivering the ocean, a future world where everyone has their own genetic pig and psychiatrists are known by their facial tattoos, and a malformed sub-reality where everyone wears argyle sweaters. It’s unique, unforgettable, and utterly marvelous.
Original trailer for Mr Nobody
COMMENTS: One of the enigmatic Nemo Nobody’s many possible past identities is a TV science lecturer who explains such esoteric concepts as Continue reading 168. MR. NOBODY (2009)
CAPSULE: VANISHING WAVES (2012)
DIRECTED BY: Kristina Buozyte
FEATURING: Marius Jampolskis, Jurga Jutaite
PLOT: A scientist experimenting with a technology to allow people to enter the minds of others finds himself in ethical dilemma when he falls in love with his test subject: a young woman trapped in a coma.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Kristina Buozyte (and her co-writer and “Creative Director” Bruno Samper) are names to keep an eye on. However, Vanishing Waves, a slightly trippier (but much sexier) variation on Inception, comes up short of making the List of the Best Weird Movies: it’s weirdness is just an accent for its science fiction conceit.
COMMENTS: Made for about 1.5 million dollars, but looking much more expensive, Vanishing Waves is a literal head-trip that explores what it might be like to travel into someone else’s mind. With fractal effects morphing out of diffused white light and neural maps that twinkle like celestial bodies in the void, overlaid with a cellular geometry, the visuals portraying the boundary between one consciousness and another reminded me of a grayscale version of Enter the Void.
Once inside the mind of the other, however, scientist Lukas finds coma victim Aurora’s interior life to be a series of tableaux based on the real world, including a paradisaical beach, an empty opera house, and a wooden home that takes on an M.C. Escher by way of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari architecture. What Lukas sees inside Aurora’s head is clearly made of dreams, as when they observe a strange blue insect eating a pile of tiny globes, which it then excretes from its hindquarters, encased in a gelatinous casing. This is a strange image of primitive sexual biology, and Aurora—who doesn’t speak, as the verbal portions of her mind clamped down in the grips of her coma—has little more than the primal urge of sex left on her mind. Her first act on encountering Lukas swimming in the infinite ocean of her consciousness is to passionately soul kiss the stranger, an act which, predictably, gets Lukas hooked and wanting more.
The sleeping Aurora has no idea who Lukas is, and in her brain-damaged fugue state cannot imagine—at least at first—the existence of any other consciousness besides hers and his. Inside her mind is a perfect guilt-free, consequence-free world of erotic abandon, and we can understand why Lukas doesn’t explain the full depth of his discoveries to his fellow scientists, even if we don’t endorse his acts. The early couplings are playful, childlike and primal, an attitude reinforced by their infantile reactions to the dishes at an elaborate imaginary feast: they splash each other with soup and wine and spit the half-chewed blackberries onto their faces, savoring texture of the food against their skin as much as its flavor. As Aurora starts to slowly and instinctively rebuild her memories, their sexual Eden unravels. A dark, mysterious third party is glimpsed lurking in the shadows of Aurora’s mind, and, in the movie’s centerpiece sequence, an orgy of writhing, faceless bodies turns from a wet dream to a nightmare. When you get down to it, Lukas is a 21st century cyber-rapist, penetrating his victim’s mind, with the coma serving the same function as a roofie snuck into a drink. However much Lukas is obsessed with Aurora, this is not a what society normally views as a solid basis for a mature relationship. Can the pair form a meaningful mind-to-mind connection under these bizarre circumstances? And, given Aurora’s low-brain-activity condition, does she have any other practical suitors? These questions are left to the viewer to decide.
Specialty releaser Artsploitation Films views Vanishing Waves as the brightest jewel in their catalog, and presents it in an elaborate 2-disc set. There is no commentary track but there are both written and filmed interviews, a hidden (that is, unlabeled) slide show, and a “making of” video. The two extra-special extras are the film’s complete soundtrack and the entirety of Kristina Buozyte’s début film, The Collectress, a drama about a woman who has to film herself engaging in increasingly risky behavior because she can only feel emotions when watching them on video.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Tally Isham, who said it had “very good moments of dream-like weirdness.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
164. UPSTREAM COLOR (2013)
“We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies.”–Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“We already know that weird things happen. So let’s just watch something happen, and let that be it. If a worm goes into Kris and then leaves her and then goes into a pig, and we see that there’s a connection and I execute it with music and cinematography and Amy’s performance, in such a way that conveys that transference of some deeply felt kind is taking place, that’s it.”–Shane Carruth on Upstream Color
DIRECTED BY: Shane Carruth
FEATURING: Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth, Andrew Sensenig, Thiago Martins
PLOT: Kris is poisoned by the Thief, who forces her to ingest a worm that sends her into a hypnotic trance, then empties her bank account. Waking up days later, and unable to cut the worm out from under her skin, she is drawn to a man (the Sampler) who surgically removes the organism and places it inside a pig. Suffering from hallucinations and delusions, Kirs then attempts to rebuild her shattered life with the assistance of Jeff, a financial analyst and recovering junkie.
- After scoring an independent hit in 2004 with the time travel puzzler Primer, made for a mere $7,000, director Shane Carruth went silent for nine years. In that time he worked on developing a script entitled A Topiary that never went into production (he referred to that project as “the thing I basically wasted my whole life on”). Carruth tried to get Hollywood backing for the project, but couldn’t get anywhere because he demanded to have final cut and final say on every aspect of the film’s production—conditions that no Hollywood producer would ever agree to.
- After finally abandoning A Topiary after seven years of attempted development, Carruth conceived and shot Upstream Color in about a year, announcing the project in October 2011 and debuting it at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2103.
- Besides writing, directing and acting in the film, Carruth is also credited with the music, cinematography and editing. He also handled distribution of the movie himself.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: “I have to apologize. I was born with a disfigurement where my head is made of the same material as the sun,” says the Thief, and a quick shot suggests his statement is true. Of course, you can only glance at the sun for the briefest of moments, and the camera observes this caution, so you may spend the rest of the movie wondering if you saw what you thought you did, or if it was just a result of a hypnotic suggestion.
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Upstream Color is the movie that asks the question, “what if there was a psychoactive parasitic worm that could create a psychic link to a person if you surgically removed it and implanted in a pig? What would that be like?” It then proceeds to answer the question.
Shane Carruth discussing Upstream Color for Sundance Film Festival’s “Meet the Artist” promo
COMMENTS: In his negative review of Upstream Color, The Guardian‘s Jeremy Kay prefaced his synopsis with, “here’s the plot, such as it is. It’s Continue reading 164. UPSTREAM COLOR (2013)
CAPSULE: HER (2013)
DIRECTED BY: Spike Jonze
FEATURING: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams
PLOT: Still wounded by his divorce, professional letter writer Theodore Twombly retreats from human relationships into a lonely life of videogames, gossip websites, and anonymous phone sex. However, his world changes after he upgrades to “the first artificially intelligent operating system,” a sentient program named Samantha that he initially treats with suspicion but soon accepts as a confidant, then a lover. When Twombly and Samantha becomes more intimate, though, her insatiable curiosity about the world strains their bond and threatens to recreate the heartbreak that Twombly experienced once before.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: While Twombly and Samantha’s pairing is weird, Jonze’s story glosses over the odder aspects of the couple to concentrate on the universal qualities of the affair. The early introduction of phone sex normalizes the sensuous but purely vocal encounter between man and program that begins their romance, and the casual acceptance of their relationship by others further overlooks uncomfortable questions that another film might dwell upon. Instead, Jonze uses the scenario to fancifully illustrate the needs, passions, and pains felt by anyone who falls in love, even a woman who exists within a digital cloud.
COMMENTS: One of Her’s most endearing moments occurs after Twombly and Samantha’s first sexual encounter, when he awkwardly tells his OS that he isn’t interested in a serious relationship. It’s strange to see a morning after scene play out between a man and his computer, and yet that strangeness is absent from the dialogue as Johannson responds with the same charming annoyance and veiled attraction she’d provide in any romantic comedy. On the surface Samantha is defined by her nonphysical nature, but the warmth of Johannson’s performance shows the character’s emotions are not constrained by the lack of a body, that she feels with as much range and depth as any person. Rather than asking if computer programs could ever feel love, as other sci-fi films have, love is not merely possible but inevitable for Samantha. In Her, love is a fundamental part of intelligent life, and so anyone worthy of being called alive, whether human or artificial, naturally must be able to love.
At the same time, Her envisions an emotionally barren future where media technology isolates people from each other, eroding the personal connections they need to thrive. Twombly embodies that isolation as he shuffles from work to home with his eyes glued to one high-tech device or another, engaging others in only the most superficial ways. However, Phoenix’s awkward, self-enclosing performance also suggests someone not just glued to technology but also afraid of emotions, even as his sensitive letters hint at a deeply empathetic soul. Like Samantha, Twombly has a natural ability to love, but unlike his newborn OS he is burdened by past romantic failures and the fear of seeing them repeated, which discourages him from pursuing love at all. That fear pushes Twombly into a stupefying routine of media consumption that keeps other people, and the emotional risks attached to them, safely at bay. Whereas Samantha’s urge to love gives her life, Twombly’s reluctance to love leads him to numbly, thoughtlessly live out his days in front of machines, depriving him of a real life.
Given Twombly’s attachment to machines, it’s fitting that the person who finally reaches him is herself part of a machine. The chemistry between the characters is palpable despite Samantha’s invisibility, not solely because of Johannson’s strong voice work but also because of Phoenix’s total commitment to the conceit. In one scene Twombly shuts his eyes and lets Samantha guide him through a busy carnival, and as he follows her voice he moves so eagerly and joyfully that she could be leading him by the hand. Conversely, when Samantha disappears at various points in the film, Twombly’s solitude exceeds that of a man simply standing by himself. In Phoenix’s face we see a wordless grief through which Samantha’s absence is apparent, and through that sense of absence the invisible character takes shape.
Twombly is shaped by the relationship too as he ends his solitude and begins to let other people connect with him again. By the end, Twombly has realized that the ability to form those connections is itself a marvelous thing, regardless of whether or not they end in heartbreak. Samantha herself is not a perfect mate and Twombly’s relationship with her never seems sustainable, but the film treasures their bond no matter how absurd and fleeting it may be. In a world where people can rely on technology to smooth out the complications in their lives, Her argues that something as complicated and ephemeral as love has a place in our lives too, that love is in fact still what makes life worth living.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: