Nothing really matters except........

Rating: 10/10 (14 November 2005)

This movie shows you an unusual man, I'm sorry, an unusual main character, to some of you he must seem extraordinarily proverbial being that he is sincerely self-centered and artificial. The characters of this film are so beautifully played that I feel I do the actors and actresses an injustice by using the expression "played". This narcissistic a**hole (Cruise's character) is given a gift that few in human history have had or will ever discover, and rightly so he loses it altogether. That alone would make a riveting and poignant story, but this story has a remarkable and intellectual twist that has been hard-pressed into your face throughout the entire film. This film makes you laugh when it wants you to laugh and it makes you sad the moment you feel content. This film makes you want to feel cheerless and for that you are grateful. To have a few moments to maybe feel closer to a character or feel that you would have done it different, maybe better, maybe said "no" to Julia, maybe won Sophia after the accident. You might feel that you would never have been in the awkward situation of having an invidious lover that knows you have fallen for another. Just the fact that you suffer these emotions shows how affecting and powerful this film is. I, for one, feel that this film is more touching than the creators or actors can take acknowledgment for unaided. This film delivers you each human emotion in a measure that perhaps some cannot accept. From the undeniable love of a character to the discomfiture and trepidation of that same character only moments later. It spins you and tricks you and leads you on in a way that you cannot trust it, but this film can be trusted to explain everything if only you are capable of understanding. Not capable in an intellectual sense, but capable in an emotional sense. This film has an underlying sensation about it, something that you desire but at the same time something that you have told yourself to avoid all your years, like falling in love. I would give anything to have what Cruise's character had. The most powerful part of this film, for me, was in the elevator when 'Tech support' told Cruise's character about his own memorial when Sophia arrived crying. ".You were missed David..it was Sophia who never fully recovered; it was she who somehow knew you best, and like you she never forgot that one night when true love seemed possible.....consequences David..it's the little things." "The little things, there's nothing bigger is there?"
Shakespeare's 'Sweet sorrow' would never scratch the surface of the parting of David and Sophia on that rooftop. Pain, a vacuum of pain and emptiness on a level few can comprehend is more closely in sight of that moment. Knowing full well the real Sophia has been dead for over a century does not help our poor, transformed David. How can we as humans speak of powerful emotion without speaking of true love? What emotion is more powerful? What else is there, really?