Zugzwang

Rating: 5/10 (8 March 2016)

So the big plot twist in Mr Nobody is that all of these timelines, even the one in the future where an elderly Nemo is being interviewed by a confused British journalist, are all figments of the imagination of a little boy. He is stuck between a choice that will presumably fling his life into two directions: stay with dad, or go with mum. In one of his theorised timelines, he is a television presenter, and this is a convenient way for Van Dormael to introduce all the buzz words and clue the viewer in with a bit of exposition. It's like if someone took pop psychology 101 and read the Wikipedia article on theoretical physics; these interrupting TED talks are a way to broach these complex issues and theories without ever really engaging with them. In another timeline an adult Nemo has devoted himself to photographing and recoding decay, which allows him to reverse footage and, in vain, combat entropy. And as he makes that agonising decision at the train, his shoe slips, and the fates of all the timelines comes up to pure luck.
Time and time again Van Dormael will rob these coincidences of any emotional factor or impact. What does it matter whether he chooses mum or dad? Maybe a tiny, split second decision will render it all in vain anyway. Maybe he will slip and be crushed by the train itself. Van Dormael blows up every little moment and decision as if it was some pivotal, life-changing fork in the road - with agonising slow motion, shallow focus shots and a desperate, wistful score to milk every last drop of profundity and poignancy from the scene. It thinks itself to be a vast and universal treatment, exploring every single possibility, every timeline, every tiny decision, but it's actually remarkably closed off. When Van Dormael doesn't know how to close off a plot line, he will write in incidents of blind or dumb luck, as if that is how life goes - a car crash or two, a gas explosion, a murder. And in the final ending, it collapses on itself and invalidates its own logic by creating an entirely different, implausible scenario by itself, thinking that it has earned that satisfying conclusion. It hasn't at all - it is inexplicable how we end up with the perfect story, having only briefly explored all the other wrong turns. And it presents an illusion on the fate of not choosing at all - to not choose is also a choice. One might wonder if little Nemo had wore a different pair of shoes and slipped and cracked his head on that open field - but the movie does not even concern itself with this bigger problem it has created. It just presents a neat little science-fiction type resolution, and it is unsatisfying.
It doesn't help that the final destination of Anna leaves much to desire. The experiences and scenes of their youth are sweet enough, but this hardly seems to mean they are fated to be together forever. Van Dormael drenches this timeline with unbearably sappy moments as if to loudly signal that this is 'the one': staring at each other in bed, making dramatic lifelong promises of true love, layering flashbacks over each other. And visually he pulls out the all stops - time lapses that create frozen moments of time where they catch each other's eye, seamless edits that link past and present, transitions that use eye and photo motifs. But it's all in vain - it undermines any genuine relationship it creates by telling us exactly which thread of fate is the perfect one. There's no need to be interested if we just patiently wait for the right choices to be made. Kruger's performance is strangely hollow for what is supposed to be the dream girl.
Jeanne is merely an afterthought, while Polley's Elise manages to actually be engaging in the little time she is afforded. It's timeline has the most coherency of them all - despite all the jump in and outs, it maintains a solid emotional tension. Polley's acting, particularly in that forced happiness during the birthday party, is so painfully striking and true. But like all the other timelines, it still descends into that same pitfall. Van Dormael focuses on single little moment - maybe buying a pair of cheap Brazilian jeans, or saying a wrong word, or helping a homeless man, and creates this dramatic, feigned importance around it. But instead of lifting giving it poignancy, all it does it sabotage itself for more and more interruptions. What about 2 minutes ago, when you had milk instead of juice for breakfast? What about when you put on your left shoe first instead of your right? What if Nemo had not been the child of the heterosexual white couple? Mr Nobody tries so desperately to grab onto every little possibility, and ends up giving none of them any real emotional significance at all.