Jaco Van Dormael
Directed and written by Jaco Van Dormael, Mr. Nobody is a brilliant film that portrays the timeless theme of life’s choices and possibilities in a refreshing and dazzling manner. Despite the complex and unconventional narrative structure of the plot, Dormael demonstrates his extraordinary skills of storytelling through presenting to the audience a magnificent film with a form more complicated than Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run and a theme broader than Peter Howitt’s primary focus on love in Sliding Doors. This essay will analyze how the the seven key conventions defined by Bordwell (2002) are defied by or applied on the film’s multi-draft narrative.
The film begins with a montage showing four deaths of Nemo at the age of 34---him lying in …show more content…
morgue, him drowning in his car under water, him being shot in the bathtub, and him waking in an explosion of a space shuttle. The quick scenes are then closely followed by 118-year-old Nemo waking up in 2092, looking as if he is confused over his own past. His memory appears to have paused in 2009 as he claims to be 34 years old. With the help of his doctor, Nemo begins to recount his whole life right from the start. These parts of Nemo’s story, his childhood and old age, are in a somewhat linear narration. The voice-over of young Nemo explains that the unborn children know everything about the past and future until the Angels of Oblivion place a finger on their lips and make them forget. Being missed by the angels, Nemo chooses his own parents and comes to the world knowing everything. He knows, from the very beginning, that certain things are meant to be. He also ponders upon existence and the irreversibility of time, which are brought up in the later parts of the film over and over.
At the age of 9, Nemo realizes the difficulty of choosing and faces the first crossroad of his life, from which point the film complicates into a multi-draft narrative. “We cannot go back. That’s why it’s hard to choose. You have to make the right choice. As long as you don 't choose, everything remains possible.” With that in mind, little Nemo chooses not to make a choice between two kinds of dessert or among three of his future partners. The audiences see Nemo marrying all three of them at the similar age but in different lives. All parallel narrative begins when Nemo faces the most critical decision of his life---deciding which parent he should live with after their separation. This can be seen as the first branching point of Nemo’s lives.
Nemo marries three women, Anna, Elise and Jean, has different jobs and dies in different incidents all in similar age, indicating that the film conforms to Bordwell’s fifth convention: forking paths often run parallel. In the first narrative, Nemo follows his mother and falls in love with Anna. Choosing to stay with his father in the second and third narratives, Nemo falls for Elise and Jean respectively. In one of these two narratives Nemo writes his own novel about travelling towards Mars on a shuttle, which makes the fourth narrative. Each of these forking paths is linear on its own, keeping to Bordwell’s first convention: “each path, after it diverges, adheres to a strict line of cause and effect.”
In these parallel narratives, Nemo keeps changing the courses whenever he encounters unpleasant incidences, such as the several deaths mentioned above. For example, in the second narrative, Nemo falls in love with Elise who does not return his affection. Heartbroken, he gets into a horrible bike accident and becomes paralyzed. Yet as soon as the voiceover says “I’ve got to get out of here. Go back. Before the accident”, the audiences watch the accident rewind and Nemo making a slightly different decision then eventually marrying the girl of his dreams. The protagonist defies death and reverses time. Here, the film adheres to the sixth convention: the forking paths presuppose the previous ones, as Nemo makes the wiser choice in the second narrative.
On the whole, Nemo wants to reinvent his own life while the doctor and the interviewer aim to make sense of Nemo’s stories and find out which of them is true.
In this sense, it can be said that the characters of Mr Nobody are somewhat goal-oriented. “Everything you say is contradictory. You can 't have been in one place and another at the same time. Of all those lives, which one is the right one?” asks the interviewer. This line shows that the film is self-reflective as it is clearly aware of the nature of its unconventional narrative. The forking paths of Nemo consist of “recurrent characters and background conditions across the different lines of action” (Wedel, 2009) which is Bordwell’s third convention. For instance, whichever path Nemo takes, he always runs into Anna, the woman who loves him as much as he does her. Not only does it show the intersection of the multiplicity, it also highlights the love theme of the film---one cannot possibly be happy with someone if the affection is not mutual. That is why Nemo is not happy with either Elise or …show more content…
Jean.
As Nemo changes the course of his lives repeatedly, the audiences could not help but wonder which fragment is his real life and whether the things he says are true at all, especially when all his alternative lives literally collide together towards the end of Nemo’s recollection. In the narrative where he stays with his dad, marries but loses Elise to an accident, Nemo escapes the death of drowning that he would have had in another narrative, but is told by his neighbor that he is drowned. The Nemo in yet another narrative who is typing in a house then finds himself in danger of drowning as the house is suddenly flooded with water. Multiple circular narratives merge into one.
Towards the end, the seemingly linear narrative of the entire film is broken down as 118-year-old Nemo tells the interviewer that neither of them really exists, because they are only “imagined by a nine year old child faced with an impossible choice”.
Nemo eventually dies at the time he has predicted he would, but as soon as he does, time rewinds quickly all the way to his childhood, echoing with Nemo’s earlier statement to his younger self, “For me, time is inverted. I start at the end of the story and go toward the beginning” and confirming that he has truly always known everything about the past as well as the future. The film ends, leaving its audiences puzzled and
stunned.
In conclusion, Mr Nobody complies with four out of seven key conventions of Bordwell’s, showing that it goes beyond traditional narrative norms. The narrative might be more closed than open in each single forking path, but it is definitely open in terms of the whole film. The mysteries of Nemo’s life have not been solved, leaving the audiences with plenty information gaps and room for interpretation. Nonetheless, the director has made his point rather explicitly through Nemo’s answer to the interviewer’s confusion, “Each of these lives is the right one! Every path is the right path. Everything could have been anything else and it would have just as much meaning.” In recent years, nothing quite compares to the beauty and depth of this marvelous film that is filled with vivid imagination and contemporary philosophy.
Notes
The 7 key conventions defined by Bordwell
1. Forking paths are linear
2. The fork needs to be sign-posted
3. forking paths tend to intersect (recurrent characters and background conditions across the different lines of action)
4. fork-path tales are unified by traditional cohesion devices
5. forking paths will often run parallel
6. all paths are not equal; the last one taken presupposes the others
7. all paths are not equal; the last one taken, or completed, is the least hypothetical one
References
Bordwell, D. (2002). “Film futures.” SubStance, 31, 1: 88-104.
Wedel, M. (2009). Time, Place and Character Subjectivity in Run Lola Run. In W. Buckland (Ed.), Puzzle films: Complex storytelling in contemporary cinema. (pp. 129-150) Chichester, West Sussex, U.K: Wiley-Blackwell.
The film begins with a montage showing four deaths of Nemo at the age of 34---him lying in …show more content…
morgue, him drowning in his car under water, him being shot in the bathtub, and him waking in an explosion of a space shuttle. The quick scenes are then closely followed by 118-year-old Nemo waking up in 2092, looking as if he is confused over his own past. His memory appears to have paused in 2009 as he claims to be 34 years old. With the help of his doctor, Nemo begins to recount his whole life right from the start. These parts of Nemo’s story, his childhood and old age, are in a somewhat linear narration. The voice-over of young Nemo explains that the unborn children know everything about the past and future until the Angels of Oblivion place a finger on their lips and make them forget. Being missed by the angels, Nemo chooses his own parents and comes to the world knowing everything. He knows, from the very beginning, that certain things are meant to be. He also ponders upon existence and the irreversibility of time, which are brought up in the later parts of the film over and over.
At the age of 9, Nemo realizes the difficulty of choosing and faces the first crossroad of his life, from which point the film complicates into a multi-draft narrative. “We cannot go back. That’s why it’s hard to choose. You have to make the right choice. As long as you don 't choose, everything remains possible.” With that in mind, little Nemo chooses not to make a choice between two kinds of dessert or among three of his future partners. The audiences see Nemo marrying all three of them at the similar age but in different lives. All parallel narrative begins when Nemo faces the most critical decision of his life---deciding which parent he should live with after their separation. This can be seen as the first branching point of Nemo’s lives.
Nemo marries three women, Anna, Elise and Jean, has different jobs and dies in different incidents all in similar age, indicating that the film conforms to Bordwell’s fifth convention: forking paths often run parallel. In the first narrative, Nemo follows his mother and falls in love with Anna. Choosing to stay with his father in the second and third narratives, Nemo falls for Elise and Jean respectively. In one of these two narratives Nemo writes his own novel about travelling towards Mars on a shuttle, which makes the fourth narrative. Each of these forking paths is linear on its own, keeping to Bordwell’s first convention: “each path, after it diverges, adheres to a strict line of cause and effect.”
In these parallel narratives, Nemo keeps changing the courses whenever he encounters unpleasant incidences, such as the several deaths mentioned above. For example, in the second narrative, Nemo falls in love with Elise who does not return his affection. Heartbroken, he gets into a horrible bike accident and becomes paralyzed. Yet as soon as the voiceover says “I’ve got to get out of here. Go back. Before the accident”, the audiences watch the accident rewind and Nemo making a slightly different decision then eventually marrying the girl of his dreams. The protagonist defies death and reverses time. Here, the film adheres to the sixth convention: the forking paths presuppose the previous ones, as Nemo makes the wiser choice in the second narrative.
On the whole, Nemo wants to reinvent his own life while the doctor and the interviewer aim to make sense of Nemo’s stories and find out which of them is true.
In this sense, it can be said that the characters of Mr Nobody are somewhat goal-oriented. “Everything you say is contradictory. You can 't have been in one place and another at the same time. Of all those lives, which one is the right one?” asks the interviewer. This line shows that the film is self-reflective as it is clearly aware of the nature of its unconventional narrative. The forking paths of Nemo consist of “recurrent characters and background conditions across the different lines of action” (Wedel, 2009) which is Bordwell’s third convention. For instance, whichever path Nemo takes, he always runs into Anna, the woman who loves him as much as he does her. Not only does it show the intersection of the multiplicity, it also highlights the love theme of the film---one cannot possibly be happy with someone if the affection is not mutual. That is why Nemo is not happy with either Elise or …show more content…
Jean.
As Nemo changes the course of his lives repeatedly, the audiences could not help but wonder which fragment is his real life and whether the things he says are true at all, especially when all his alternative lives literally collide together towards the end of Nemo’s recollection. In the narrative where he stays with his dad, marries but loses Elise to an accident, Nemo escapes the death of drowning that he would have had in another narrative, but is told by his neighbor that he is drowned. The Nemo in yet another narrative who is typing in a house then finds himself in danger of drowning as the house is suddenly flooded with water. Multiple circular narratives merge into one.
Towards the end, the seemingly linear narrative of the entire film is broken down as 118-year-old Nemo tells the interviewer that neither of them really exists, because they are only “imagined by a nine year old child faced with an impossible choice”.
Nemo eventually dies at the time he has predicted he would, but as soon as he does, time rewinds quickly all the way to his childhood, echoing with Nemo’s earlier statement to his younger self, “For me, time is inverted. I start at the end of the story and go toward the beginning” and confirming that he has truly always known everything about the past as well as the future. The film ends, leaving its audiences puzzled and
stunned.
In conclusion, Mr Nobody complies with four out of seven key conventions of Bordwell’s, showing that it goes beyond traditional narrative norms. The narrative might be more closed than open in each single forking path, but it is definitely open in terms of the whole film. The mysteries of Nemo’s life have not been solved, leaving the audiences with plenty information gaps and room for interpretation. Nonetheless, the director has made his point rather explicitly through Nemo’s answer to the interviewer’s confusion, “Each of these lives is the right one! Every path is the right path. Everything could have been anything else and it would have just as much meaning.” In recent years, nothing quite compares to the beauty and depth of this marvelous film that is filled with vivid imagination and contemporary philosophy.
Notes
The 7 key conventions defined by Bordwell
1. Forking paths are linear
2. The fork needs to be sign-posted
3. forking paths tend to intersect (recurrent characters and background conditions across the different lines of action)
4. fork-path tales are unified by traditional cohesion devices
5. forking paths will often run parallel
6. all paths are not equal; the last one taken presupposes the others
7. all paths are not equal; the last one taken, or completed, is the least hypothetical one
References
Bordwell, D. (2002). “Film futures.” SubStance, 31, 1: 88-104.
Wedel, M. (2009). Time, Place and Character Subjectivity in Run Lola Run. In W. Buckland (Ed.), Puzzle films: Complex storytelling in contemporary cinema. (pp. 129-150) Chichester, West Sussex, U.K: Wiley-Blackwell.