Frightening about human nature

Rating: 9/10 (26 August 2007)

This film is powerful, moving, and shocking. It shows what happens when people are suffering, and do not know how to handle their suffering in ways that do not hurt others. What begins as a friendship, then becomes a competition, eventually turns into a maddening and psychotic race to defeat another person and to destroy the other person's entire existence. In doing so, it dehumanizes everyone involved, and is frightening in terms of what it says about our inability to contain our pain. Saul Bellow once said something to the effect that an honorable man is one who does not pass his hurts along to others. These people fail to be honorable, with tragic results. And yet, they are not evil.
The storyline, setting, and acting are all superb. David Bowie as Nicolai Tesla is masterful casting. This may be the only filming of this brilliant man, someone who changed civilization, yet was the participant in his own self-destructive competition with someone less talented who we all know, although only because he won the "competition," not because he was more talented or important.
This movie, like few others, stays with you. Months after seeing it, I still am affected by it. Ignore the critics. See it.