A special effects–heavy sci-fi epic full of young A-list (well, maybe B-plus-list) stars, budgeted at $58 million, making it the most expensive Belgian film made to that date, Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody screened at the Toronto and Venice film festivals in 2009, and then more or less disappeared.
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Never distributed in the U.S. despite (or maybe because of) its thematic and superficial similarity to the previous year's awards season also-ran The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Nobody will resurface in Los Angeles this weekend, one of two films selected by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association for their annual L.A. Film Fest sidebar "The Films That Got Away." (For what it's worth: I'm a member of LAFCA but I was not involved in the "Films That Got Away" curation process.)
As odd as it may seem that there could be a lost Jared Leto film dependent on — even deserving of — activist film critics to rescue it from the dustbin of history, it's not much of a surprise that the two-and-a-half-hour, willfully (if playfully) obtuse Nobody "got away" to begin with.
In the film's 2092-set framing story, Nemo Nobody (Leto, appearing alternately in severe aging makeup and as his youthful, beautiful self) is a 118-year-old invalid being kept in some kind of observation facility. The rest of the human race has achieved "quasi-immortality," rendering sex obsolete, and they're eagerly watching and waiting for Nobody, the last mortal left alive, to die.
With the end apparently near, a journalist comes to visit Nobody to record his recollections of life before the certainty of death was eradicated. Nobody wistfully remembers meat, cigarettes, pollution. "We did everything we can't do in this dump and it was wonderful," he says. "Most of the time, nothing happened. Like a French movie. Everybody was always screwing."
Dying Nobody goes on to give the journalist several different versions of his life story. These diverging narratives, presented on-screen as fragments intercut out of order, all take off from the traumatic moment when 9-year-old Nobody was asked by his divorcing mom and dad to pick one with whom to live. "As long as you don't choose, everything remains possible," the child realizes, a truism that becomes a lifelong affliction.
The film wades through every life outcome that seems possible to preadolescent Nemo. He could become a straight-laced suburban dad with a basket-case wife (Sarah Polley) and a brood of kids holding him down. Or perhaps he ends up a longhaired free spirit who encounters his first love (Diane Kruger as an adult, Juno Temple as a teen) by chance, disappearing into her embrace only to lose her again to an accident of chaos theory. He half-remembers, half-fantasizes being an unborn child in a hazy prelapsarian space full of angels and unicorns. He could become an artist, an executive, a scientist with a TV show on which he presents theories of temporal dimensionality that echo the film's structural conceits. He could travel to Mars — or at least imagine it.
Unfolding in overlapping layers of memory, dream and hallucination, withholding clues as to which stories within the story should be taken as Nemo's "true" biography, Mr. Nobody often sinks deeply into one narrative realm, and then shifts, whiplash-quick, into another. Van Dormael recognizes and attempts to inoculate his film from the criticism that it's impossibly convoluted by having the confused, flustered journalist comment on it, but to an adventurous viewer, its puzzle structure will be its key selling point.
Mr. Nobody consciously references the history of time-travel and alternate-psychological-reality flicks, not least in its musical choices — "Mr. Sandman" is used as a refrain in a manner that recalls Back to the Future, and it's impossible to see a scene set in the crumbling landscape of the mind scored to the Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" and not think of another Leto film, Fight Club.
Mr. Nobody arrives in Los Angeles at perhaps the perfect time, as its ideal audience has just been primed for the charms of its assaultive, romantic indeterminacy by Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.
THE FILMS THAT GOT AWAY: MR. NOBODY | Sat., June 25, 9:45 p.m. | L.A. Film Fest at REDCAT | lafilmfest.com
"To rescue it from the dustbin of history", I think that is a bit harsh. I agree with who ever sasid it "It was never lost, it just wasn't made available to us." But it is out there if you know where to look I had to fight tooth and nail to get my copy off ebay and even then it came all the way from China ( Yes that right China and it's not a fake or a copy Region 2)
hello, first sorry for my English, I'm from Spain and here we saw the movie in theaters, it's a shame that United States has not had a good distribution. for me is one of the best movie of 2010. the film is pure poetry and Jared Leto makes a wonderful interpretation. under normal conditions, both the movie, like Jared Leto should have been nominated for an Oscar this year. advice, if you can not miss it
Though it's hard to be objective about a movie that has Jared Leto in it (oh well:D), THIS movie is a very very good one. It also screened earlier this month at The Transylvania International Film Festival (TIFF) and I was sooo thrilled to go see it one more time! The audience loved it and applauded a lot at the end. The director did an amazing job and so did Jared (as always)! Wish he would have been invited for some Q&A...:D
It was never lost, it just wasn't made available to us in the U.S. I've seen it in French but would like to be able to purchase it here in the U.S. Its a shame that Jared Leto is considered a B-Lister by Hollywood. I think he's a much better actor than many so called A-Listers, he has so much more natural talent and doesn't have to overact in anything he's done.
I was able to buy the movie on Amazon. For the US, you need to make sure it is not a Zone 2 dvd.I love this movie! As always, Jared Leto is great.
I have Mr. Nobody on DVD and have watched it many times with a new perspective almost everytime. Jared Leto's acting is superb, especially as the old man with movements made to perfection. What would our lives be like if we paused for only a moment to make a better, or at least, different choice?
I've watched this film twice in the cinema and a couple of times on DVD. Every time I discover a new detail and understand something better. The images are eyecandy and I think the acting is very good. I think a lot of people wonder what their lifes would be like had they made other choices.One of my fave movies.
Charley ( the Netherlands)
Mr. Nobody is a wonderful movie that stays with you, leaves you talking about it, is even better the second time and I am so glad that it is finally coming to the States!
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