A sixth emotion: Boredom

Rating: 3/10 (20 December 2004)

At one point in this film the main character is told that there are five basic emotions: guilt, hate, shame, revenge and love. My immediate response was, what about anger and fear? I think this serves as a good illustration of this movie as a whole. It tries to appear intelligent, but it just isn't.
This movie asks some basic existential questions. For that purpose it tells a confusing story where the main character is led to question reality, his sanity, what's important in his life, friendship, love and all the usual clichés. And the answers are mostly the usual dogmas we all know by heart; Friendship and love is more important than money and good looks. D'oh!
This lightweight philosophical theme is set against a confusing story that doesn't have any real progress or goal. We just get to watch the main character get more and more confused, and his reality is failing more and more. Until the end, when we get the conclusion in a way that's just as imaginative as explaining all the unanswered questions of reality with something supernatural, such as God.
I suspect this movie will cater very well to intellectuals who love to analyze movies. There are plenty of metaphors here to dig into. The problem, however, is that they are not really interesting since the questions asked are, as stated earlier, mostly the usual clichés, and the answers are the usual dogmas. In my opinion this leaves no real reason to try to analyze this story, except for the mental exercise of analyzing and satisfying ones own intellectual ego through the process. That can of course be fruitful and interesting in itself. But it doesn't make an exciting movie.
To sum up, the problem with this movie is that the story is uninteresting and boring, and with an unimaginative conclusion. The questions raised are clichés, and the answers are dogmas. Good for those who like to analyze movies, boring for the rest of us. I give this film 3/10.