The Absence of God

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2004)

I'm not a film critic, although obvious performances and overall production values of a "bad" movie can be discerned to even the untrained eye, I was very impressed with this movie. Rarely am I interested enough in a movie's DVD version to spend time with those wonderful bonus bits yet this one had me eagerly watching the commentary from the directors. Their insights were intriguing as was the symbolism (albeit used sparingly).
My desire to add to this commentary came out of my retrospective thoughts about how Evan's decisions to go back in time were mostly grounded in his wish to make things better. Every instance of intervention on his part was marked by an equal intervention from a person or persons. Nowhere in the story does the influence of "uncontrollable" events change things for the better or in most cases for the worse. Acts of God do not have relevance in this story. Everything that occurs is the result of decisions made by human beings. As the realization of this came to me I became even more impressed with the writer's intentions (be they willing or otherwise) to illustrate (to me at least) how we are ultimately responsible for what happens in this world and more precisely in our own lives. Though one could argue that the very tool of being able to choose is in fact a construct of the Almighty and therefore the relevance of God is in fact prominent in the movie I personally believe that is not the case. Al Pacino, as Milton in 'The Devil's Advocate' said it with such aplomb: "Free Will Baby!!"