Nobody

Mr. Nobody

Cause you can learn from ‘anything’

I have the special talent of being able to watch almost anything on the television. During my initial days in the UAE I even watched a few Arabic comedy serials on the TV box that came along with the house. So much so that I once passed by a curios looking man and immediately remarked to a friend “This guy is famous, but no one recognizes him here in this neighbourhood”. Coming back to watching anything on TV, I have a hard disk, which should ideally be called - Friends Season Storage Device, but FSSD would just be too weird an acronym. Since, the only thing that its used for is to watch Friends. However, over the years its also served the purpose of a backup for data acquired through various jobs and more importantly movies generously handed over and archived in the most random way as movies in folders with dates of when they were acquired (making it impossible to find a movie, unless you specifically spent 2 hours to track it down the last time and have a horrible memory of the process).

I stumbled upon a great film called ‘Unbroken’, only on completion realising that its a movie directed by Angelina Jolie. I highly recommend you watch this long film (I won’t lie), but one that you power through in the comfort of your home, showcases a man’s struggle through the wrath of nature and war - much more than any discomfort you may have; besides constantly having to change the thermostat. After watching this film, I genuinely felt that I had to search for more such hidden gems on the hard disk and decided to give every - non-popular, slow-starting and traditionally considered ehhh-film a chance. 

The second film I found was aptly named Mr. Nobody. A few of you may gasp ‘how could he not have heard of this?’ (again honestly, it just skipped my radar), but then again I feel its a movie that comes to you when the time is right, when you have the time and energy to watch it, reflect on it and then maybe - even blog about it! The movie stars Jared Leto, Sarah Polley, Diane Kruger, Linh Dan Pham, Rhys Ifans, Natasha Little, Toby Regbo, Juno Temple. the only ones I knew of course were Jared Leto and Diane Kruger (well she did play Helen of Troy, for those of us who weren’t looking at Brad Pitt - this is what we saw in the film). Mr. Nobody according to me brings together most of our recurring nightmares, life long struggles with certain truths and most definitely the question of ‘what if?’. It manages to explain the butterfly effect with the simplicity of a kindergarten teacher and go on to explore string theory with the gentle caress of an oriental masseuse.

Its a film (according to me) that manages to get you to think about where you are, how you got there and certain things that you always wonder - theres others wondering about the same exact emotion of commotion. We often ask ourselves, if we deserved this? good or bad. Did we? Only to realise that the answer to the ever so menacing question is bound in some cases with an action of our own. But in some instances, to the most random occurrence elsewhere on earth (or even the universe).

Your choice to snub someone away, who could have been your soulmate to inviting someone in, who could lead you to your eventual true-love. The film asks all of these questions through sheer illustrations. The most powerful of them (be patient with this narration) is:

>He meets the love of his life, whom he lost 15 years ago, because the beggar he gave a quarter to everyday had died in her sleep and he patiently waits for the paramedics to take the body away. Meeting her after 15 years at the very station they both used for travel for who knows how long.
     >They remember the old times together and its time to part ways albeit temporarily - she hands him a piece of paper and asks for a promise that he’d call her in two days.
    >He holds the piece of paper as she walks away, it starts to rain and he loses the number. The rain is unseasonal, caused by (get this) a Brazilian who got laid off from his Denim manufacturing factory was boiling his egg and forgot about it, the resultant evaporation cause a small cloud through his chimney adding to the already existing clouds that would eventually land over New York.
   >Because, the last time Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto) went to buy a pair of Jeans, he chose the cheaper one, which spurned growth of the Chinese manufacturing units and led to a drop in demand for the Brazilian imports into the USA.

Is he a part of the cycle that makes things go right or wrong for himself? While most films would follow a linear path, taking a story forward from just the writers stubborn necessity to manoeuvre the future of a character. This one gives you 2-3 possibilities. Be attentive with this one, otherwise you’d be left thinking this movie is the confused meandering of an inebriated writer with no thought or direction. Instead, its a brilliant rendition of how we are imprisoned by our own 3 dimensions and its realities. With the 9 intended dimensions, you could take two simultaneous paths, if they cross later or not - its an altogether different hypothesis. But the possibilities by opening up just another reality, makes for an infinite number of possibilities.

Another very powerful statement comes from the childhood of Nemo, saying “As long as you don't choose, everything remains possible”. Powerful, as a thought but utterly useless as a consequence - because you are now leaving things to chance and thats just making like 2 dimensional. SO instead of continuing to curse things in a 3 dimensional world, the next time you lay yourself down to sleep, dream on about all the crossroads you reached, the path you took and where they could’ve taken you. Don’t count sheep - try this. I guarantee a good nights sleep, mental exercise and a lesson in decision making for the future.

As I earlier said, this movie got me out of my writing slumber - so it must have more than just dreaming-life-lessons. I also predict that with the shift in the way media is consumed, the way in which we lead our lives - content is constantly being customised to micro-alignment with peoples preferences. The future of story telling, the oldest and yet most compelling form of communication - used for everything from advertising to informing to convincing to more horribly political propaganda will be non-linear story telling.

Its where the end user has a choice to take the story forward, there will be decisions and there will be multiple routes to go. Your reader/viewer will decide how to go ahead. the eventual story will hit further points of division - giving you 2, 4, 8, 16 or who knows how many endings. Based on thought processes, you could have multiple writers collaborating together. Imagine a movie begins with James Cameron, then comes to a point where the protagonist must decide - Yes, No or Maybe. Each of them deeply embedded into an already established story. Yes goes to Ang Lee, No back to James Cameron and Maybe to Baz Luhrmann. Then even further divisions later. No they can’t be theatre prints for these - or can there?

Ponder on - but remember, the first decision you took, was to read this. From here, good luck to you and your decisions, at least you know how it works or it doesn’t.

May the Force be with you!