Remember the last third of 2001: A Space Odyssey, when astronaut Dave Bowman was a really old man? That’s who Jared Leto, wearing some very convincing makeup, resembles in parts of Mr. Nobody, an engrossing, technological virtuoso of a sci-fi flick from French director Jaco Van Dormael that plays out much like that last third of Stanley Kubrick’s epic.
Leto plays Nemo Nobody, a 118-year-old man who is the last living mortal in a futuristic age when humanity has apparently attained some form of immortality. He’s a celebrity, it seems, which is why a young reporter sneaks into his hospital room to interview him. Nemo goes ahead and tells the man his life story—a story involving multiple lives.
The question, then, is which reality Nemo talks about is real? The one in which he becomes a scientist with a TV show who marries a woman who develops a crushing depression? The one in which, as a teenager, he falls in love with a girl who turns out to be his new stepsister? The one in which he’s on a ship headed to Mars that encounters a deadly asteroid field?
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s much, much more to this 155-minute story, which Van Dormael tells out of order, employing fantastic, tour-de-force rushes of imagery and sound, each reality juxtaposed next to each another, sometimes bleeding into one another, daring you to make sense of what exactly it is you’re seeing.
Rest assured, Van Dormael does eventually tell us what is happening, what this confusing swirl of images is all about. Some may guess it early, some may not, some will guess it and love it, and some will guess it and think what a ridiculous mess the movie is. Ultimately, it tells an epic yet intimate tale about a human being, one that is confounding and visually wondrous and never, ever boring. - [DVD]
Drama/Fantasy/Romance
Rated R
DVD Release Date: 2/25/14
