weirdly brilliant, weirdly weird, weirdly invigorating, and hard to quite categoize

Rating: Null/10 (8 November 2015)

All time travel stories end in paradox so there's no use even thinking too much about it. After this film you may wonder what exactly happened the first time around. It would have to have been just as it was, except without the blackouts. Except no, that isn't true - because taking out the blackouts changes everything. And his just living the 'important' moments normally, without the weird blackout behavior, also alters everything, so that the later important events wouldn't necessarily have even happened. Also includes the usual paradox where events occur that were dependent on their having occurred in the first place. So. Time travel story. No use even thinking about it.
I'll get my one real criticism out out of the way upfront - the theatrical and director's cut endings are both god awful. The theatrical doesn't even make sense, either for the filmmakers or for the character. He has literally no reason not to go talk to her, and every reason to go talk to her. He knows better than to think he's inherently 'bad for her' or some kind of curse, or that they're doomed - he knows and understands the specific childhood moments that caused the problems. He has avoided them for her - she's fine and grown. So go talk to her. The other ending, with the death in the womb, makes sense, but is just too grim.
That's the thing with this movie - it's one of the most relentlessly depressing, pessimistic movies I've ever seen. A list of the things that occur in the film would read like a rap sheet of the 10 worst people in Hell. There's content in this that is entirely out of place in this kind of narrative. In one scene the characters are shown watching Se7en at a theater - well, to me, there are scenes and elements in this film creepier and scarier, by a lot, than anything in Se7en. To be honest, if you really think about it all, this is actually a weird kind of horror film. But it's like an existential horror film. Just a collection of horrifying experiences and nightmarish circumstances - and the horrific circumstances are always taken fresh, they're always new and acutely felt, so that their full horror is always there for both the viewer and the character. In real life we rarely realize the full horror of our situation, however horrible it may be. We're just so used to it, and we arrived at it so naturally and so gradually - we take it for granted. We don't see it as it really is. If at odd moments we do understand the full horror of our circumstances, we tend to panic. But these moments are fleeting.
Well, one way to describe this movie is to say that it's a succession of such moments of sudden realization of the full horror of one's circumstances. So, as I say - an existential horror film. Maybe the best ever.
For all that, it left me feeling invigorated and challenged. It left me thinking about my own life and my own decisions and my own paths not taken. "Oh man," I thought, watching it, "I'm one of the bad versions." Most people, if they were honest, would say the same as they watched it. The film made me reassess and want to do better.
Not many movies leave us with these lingering feelings of mission and purpose and possibility. But certain narratives and types of narrative can do the trick. Source Code is another one. They just leave you thinking and feeling all shaken up. You sit there and reflect on your life and feel you could live it differently and better.
This is valuable. As to the rest - quality of the production is top notch, writing is brilliant, acting is solid across the board. As mentioned already, subject matter is just ludicrously brutal and depressing. And maybe all the worse for being depicted matter of factly. There's no sentimentalism about any of the stuff. There's not even that much sensationalism about it. It's all just boom boom boom, very casually and matter of factly presented to you. The film is super casual about horrors that in other movies would have an aura of unspeakable horror and all the solemnity that goes with that and so on. No real solemnity here. And it's unsettling.
So yea. It's a good one. I didn't expect much from it. But as far as the ending - a film this relentlessly depressing and brutal deserves its happy ending. Give them the serendipitous moment and let the sun shine on your characters for once.