The Cosmic Orphan

Rating: Null/10 (4 December 2013)

Directed by Jaco Van Dormael, "Mr Nobody" stars Jared Leto as an elderly man who reminisces about his past life. The film's big gimmick, however, is this: Leto's character is able to see what his life would have been like had he made different choices as a child, teenager and adult. Dormael's film thus contains several overlapping narratives, in which we witness as each of Jared's "lifetimes" unfold.
Dormael's film pretends to be about chaos, chance, choice and indeterminism, but ultimately does something else. His film, at times overtly, at times covertly, believes in fate, true love, right choices and the comfortable closure afforded by destiny. His film panders to the ego, and bows down to man's ability to choose, make rational decisions and be self-directed. It is a paean to free-agency, and almost every aesthetic and narrative choice either intentionally or unintentionally undermines the more horrific aspects of existentialism. Indeed, though the film pretends to be about a mankind suffocated by the sheer weight of possibility, the actual "options" presented to Leto are small-minded, and mostly have to do with sex.
Resolutely postmodern, "Mr Nobody" is comprised of a series of self-contained, busily directed vignettes, most of which are evocative of similar and better films. As the film's realities and time-lines shift, so to does Dormael's style. Bizarrely for a film about "complexity", each time-line is comprised of a fairly simple, generic story, each with many overly dramatic moments (lots of explosions and deaths). To make matters worse, Leto's character (called Nemo, Latin for "no man") is always aware that he is "experiencing a different time-line", which leads to our hero looking perpetually confused. Better to have each time-line completely separate from the other, with no "bleeding" between each of the film's multiple universes.
Indeterminism, incidentally, is the bedrock of film noir. Influenced by the birth of 20th century existentialism, early noirs traditionally watched as poor schmucks were yanked about by a conspiratorial cosmos, poked and prodded like puppets on string. A noir like Kubrick's "The Killing", for example, which utilises a fractured narrative somewhat similar to "Mr Nobody's", is exclusively about a character who attempts to control his life, only to see it veer off into surprising and unsuspecting directions. Each of his actions have a billiard-ball effect, each choice inciting a causal chain of reactions. Kubrick's hero, exasperated by the universe's law of derailment, eventually gives up with an "Eh, what's the point?". Dormael's climax espouses the opposite.
5/10 – Worth one viewing.