MYST POST #6: Mr. Nobody

After the press Jared Leto has been getting recently for his role in Dallas Buyers Club, I realized that the only movie I have seen with Jared Leto is American Psycho, and Leto only has a smaller supporting role. Because I hadn't seen much of him in movies I was interested in seeing some of his work. The movie that I picked out was Mr. Nobody, an independent sci-fi/fantasy film that was released in 2009 and one that instantly became a new favorite for me. I normally am not that interested in sci-fi/fantasy movies, but this one was extremely interesting and one that made me think throughout the whole thing.

The movie centers around Nemo Nobody, a 118 year old man who is the last living mortal in a world in which the secret to immortality has been discovered. He tells his life story to a journalist as he is on his deathbed and reviews the decisions he made in life. He tells his story from different ages using a nonlinear narrative and includes alternate paths that could have been taken based on a single decision that he made. This movie plays with the theme of illusion versus reality. The science and psychological aspects that were infused in the movie made it interesting to think about the ideas of time and other dimensions presented. 

Because of the major theme of illusion versus reality I believe that the majority of close-ups on eyes were used to emphasize how we perceive or see things. Something that made the movie intriguing to watch was the use of soft colors and crisp images. The camera went in and out of focus a lot, which also goes along with the idea of differing perceptions. One key scene that comes to mind when thinking about the cinematography of this movie is one in which Nemo is being carried to his grave after making a bad decision and dying. The shot is done rotated 90 degrees! The whole scene is shot this way (about a minute of footage) as Nemo is carried through a forest to his grave. I found this scene extremely disorienting because I had never seen something done that way in a movie before! 

There are a few symbols that have a huge presence in Mr. Nobody. Trains are a representation of how time and life keep moving forward on one track. A train is used as a symbol for the passing of time and decision making literally when Nemo has to pick which parent he wants to live with after they separate. His mom gets on the train and his dad stands at the station. Nemo must make a choice between the two, and as the older Nemo reflects on his life, he thinks about each possible outcome and how the rest of his life would be affected because of it. In life, like a train, there will be different tracks to choose, but you can only pick one. 

Another important symbol in this film is water, something that Nemo has a fear of. In many scenes where Nemo dies, he is surrounded by water--whether he is drowned in a pool, sitting in a bathtub, flooded while sitting in a room, or trapped in his car underwater--it seems like water is something that always seems to trap him. Water is something that destroys his life on multiple different paths. When he gets a girl's number, a drop of water caused by a chain of events causes the ink to run and he loses the number, and thus, the girl he had always loved. An important aspect of this film is the butterfly effect, or the idea that one event leads to another and another which eventually leads up to a bigger event. It's the idea that a small change in a situation can lead to an even bigger change later in someone's life. This movie explores that idea using the unreliability of memory and captivating story telling. 

I absolutely loved this movie when I watched it and I feel like I could watch it over and over again and discover new things about it each time I see it. It kept me thinking and guessing throughout the whole movie and made me think about life in a different way. I have always been interested in the idea that one little thing or change in events can make a huge difference later on, and this movie really explored that in the coolest way. For its masterful storytelling and complex plot and characters, I would give Mr. Nobody 5/5 stars. 







Rating: ★★★★★