As the film opens, Nemo Nobody, actually the star Jared Leto
all made up, lies in a very public hospice, at age 118, in a high rise above a
futuristic city, the last living mortal on Earth, in 2092. The deal is that if he just lives hours
longer, the “time arrow of physics” will terminate and he can become immortal.
That’s because entropy will be spent, and the Universe will no longer keep
expanding. Nemo really talks a lot about gravity and space-time, and how the
Universe arbitrarily gave us one temporal dimension and just three spatial
ones, and left the other six (actually seven, according to formal string
theory) unused and normally inaccessible.
Everyone else has become immortal through “telemerization”
of their bodily cells. They’ve given up
sex (maybe even gender), as well as most food, and really most forms of
pleasure. There’s no responsibility – no
more kids, not even “Children of Men”, and no eldercare (except for Nemo). I would hope that becoming an angel would be a
better deal than that. Reproduction of living things happens in order to counteract entropy.
Nemo is debriefed by an angel with a tattooed face (again,
not my taste), although fitting into the artistic theme of argyle patterns, a
common image (right out of the Twin Peaks world of David Lynch, I think). There’s also a “journalist” (a blogger?) who
sneaks in with old tech equipment to interview him. Curiously, Nemo, as a young
adult, often journals his own galactic adventures (maybe approaching those of
Ender) on an old typewriter. I love that line where Nemo says to the blogger, "I've got nothing to say to you, I'm Mr. Nobody".
The quantum theory paradoxes allow him access to a number of
possible paths in his life. His parents separated when he was nine, and the
movie storyboard focuses around a scene where his mother is on a streetcar tram,
and he chases down the track. He gets
raised by his mother, that’s one set of circumstances; his dad will provide
another. The movie provides an
out-of-sequence narrative of all of the major episodes, like chards that can eventually be put back. Despite entropy, jigsaw puzzles can be solved. We just can;t quite unmix cake batter (which we would lick as kids) into original ingredients.
One of the most interesting episodes is a trip to Mars
(inside a huge pod with terrific views of the desert), and life in hibernation
on a spaceship – to be pulverized by space debris (as in “Gravity”). But other tragedies are more earthbound, such
as his drowning after an auto accident, and his taking care of his disabled
father, with great tenderness, actually washing the elder’s body in a shower in
one scene. And there is romance (with
Sarah Polley), scattered throughout, starting at age 15. Of course, this new world order of
immortality will never know heterosexual passion again, a real fear of social
conservatives.
The official site is here. Other companies involved are Pan
Europeene and Wild Bunch.
The music score has a lot of music by Satie, Bellini, Faure,
and Bach, as well as the ‘40s popular song about the Sandman. There is original
music by Pierre Van Dormael. The film
was shot in Belgium, Quebec, Germany, and the UK.
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