Mr. Nobody [Blu-Ray]

Just to be clear: Mr. Nobody doesn't placate its audience with traditional narrative tactics, citing a familiar moral quandary to edify with linear plot points and an inevitably tense, but reassuring, climax. It's a big budget experimental art film, flaunting unflattering, messy emotions poetically, without pretence, despite tackling the sticky subject of existential ennui and mortal anxiety with explanations of string theory, entropy and pigeon superstition. These concepts are introduced clearly and cleverly, offering rudimentary scientific explanations for chaotic events and the knowledge of choice defining all things consequential, giving some context to the central plight of young Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto/Toby Regbo/Thomas Byrne) standing on a train platform, forced to choose between his newly divorced mother and father (Natasha Little and Rhys Ifans). When he responds to this self-described Zugzwang by making no choice at all, his life splinters into an infinite number of possibilities, mostly involving marriage and domesticity with the passionate Anna (Juno Temple/Diane Kruger), the depressive Elise (Sarah Polley/Clare Stone) and the meek Jean (Linh Dan Pham/Audrey Giacomini). A Mars expedition factors in, as do colour coordinated factory showrooms and butterflies flapping their wings in Japan. Shifting backwards and forwards through time and space, Nemo experiences love, loss, death, success, parenthood ― the gamut of life offerings ― assessing the arbitrary nature of existence, ultimately settling on fleeting love and passion as prime signifiers. With a carefully organized, bright, expansive colour scheme and symbolically rendered visual effects, such as hands reaching from the sky to pick up cars or helicopters carrying away the ocean piece by piece, this uniquely cathartic visual poem offers the grandiosity in aesthetics this all-encompassing tale of passion and purpose purports to. Resultantly, it's an immersive experience for those that give into the tone, but it can fray at the edges for those unwilling to remove themselves from the vacuum of practical logic. The Blu-Ray offers only the extended version, which delves further into Nemo's future visions and bedwetting, also giving more of a context to the gangsters after him in the Jean storyline. There is also a 50-minute "Making of" that's mostly in French, without subtitles, but features many discussions about the nature of choice and the human experience. A brief "Behind the Scenes" is also included, as is a trailer.