A Guide To Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody

Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody is like a piece of great literature and needs to be "read" like one. This means that the viewer needs to have an ability to make connections with other literature and with their heart. If the reader is able only to make superficial connections they will come away with the impression that there is no ultimate meaning to life at the end of the movie.

Back in my university days it was very common for the students to forget that "Every great writer is a great deceiver" as well as a "storyteller, teacher, enchanter--but [that] it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer" (Vladimir Nabokov "How to be a Good Reader or Kindness to Authors").

And thus, I had to sit through many a class while my fellow students destroyed literature with their ignorance and cruelty. The youngest and most beautiful girls would swoon at Nabokov and Wallace Stevens and say it was so beautiful and wonderful, drooling sick and sugary syrup from their mouths, but never understanding exactly why the literature was beautiful. I once, heard a beautiful girl, accustomed to being thought intelligent in high school, tell the professor that she loved T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland because it was dreamy and had mermaids.

And then, there is the intellectual student. These are the ones with dour faces and black-rimmed glasses and mouths that know big words. These never understand anything and all great literature is nihilistic and nothing to them. They drone on, explaining why the literature was great -- because it means nothing and has no meaning (actually, they're too blind to know meaning when they run into it). These go on to power positions in politics or universities where they attempt steal the joy and meaning of learning and living from the rest of us.

These two types of "readers," the sugary girls and the educated idiots are bad readers and will not understand Mr. Nobody, but will shape nearly all opinion about it.

"the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense"(Vladimir Nabokov "Kindness to Authors").

Here are a few connections I've noticed upon completing a first viewing. There must be much more:

Literature:
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
"Annabelle Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe
Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov
The Odyssey by Homer
Bible

Movies:
Groundhog Day with Bill Murry
It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart
The Matrix with Keanu Reeves
Dead Man with Johnny Depp
The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland

Symbolism:
Water
Muses
Trains
Tunnels
Colors

And ultimately, these connections to the wider universe are only road markers, pointing us to the meaning of Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody, which is about the most important connection of all.

Time's Glass

"I'm frightened, Auntie Em; I'm frightened," says Dorothy as she awaits her demise in the Wicked Witch of the West's castle.

The red sands of the hourglass are running out.

"New evidence is suggesting that time is slowly disappearing from our universe, and will one day vanish completely" ("New Theory Nixes 'Dark Energy': Says Time is Disappearing from the Universe," 13 Sep. 2009, www. dailygalaxy.com).

I knew it. This explains a lot. The reason I don't have enough time to accomplish what I'd like is because time is running out.

Professor Jose Senovilla of Spain, along with esteemed colleagues is proposing "that there is no such thing as dark energy at all, and we're looking at things backwards. Senovilla proposes that we have been fooled into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating, when in reality, time itself is slowing down" ("New Theory")

"[P]rof Senovilla says, the appearance of acceleration is caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock with a run-down battery" ("New Theory")

Toto and I learned awhile ago that we're looking at things backwards. We're always looking backwards. It's part of being human. It's called history and memory.

I think that what the scientist may mean is that we're looking at things upside down. This earth is upside down. We like to reverse the divine order and fool ourselves that it is right side up.

I discovered long ago that things such as the Great Pyramids of Egypt are upside down. Really, they should be balanced upon their tips, but because we live in a reflection, they are balanced on their widest part, rather than on the tip as the originals are.

We only believe we are rightside up because gravity allows us that privilege.

What happens when time runs out?

And by the way, have you heard of the Wizard of Oz Experiment?

Coincidentally, I was wondering who is behind the computer curtain, then forgot about my musings until I came across this.

In the Wizard of Oz Experiment a person is lead to believe that they are interacting with an autonomous computer. In reality there is a "wizard," a human controlling things and interacting with the user.

And why is it that since a very esteemed personage came to town people have been joking about their computers and telephones behaving oddly?

Who is behind the curtain?

Well, I am Dorothy, the Meek and Small, and it's my billowing bale of hay, my cowardly carnivore, rattling can, and puppy in a picnic basket that melt the green one, not a Kansan with a hot air balloon. And it wasn't a dream, old pal, Hunk.

Toto, who's behind the telescreen?

The Wizard of Oz will return to the Big Screen September 23. But, there is always that big butt, the company putting on the event won't display the theatres until one clicks the "buy ticket" button. And because I am naturally skeptical I won't click the button to find out if it's showing anywhere near me. For all I know, that one click could access my account and get me a ticket for New York City.

I finished my reread of George Orwell's 1984, since the Kindle brouhaha rekindled my desire to read it. It puts that overly referred to piece of poor writing and thinking by Aldous Huxley to shame. When will Amazon delete Brave New World from the Kindle? I surely wouldn't cry over that. Ascetics flagellating themselves near lighthouses have never impressed me.

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power." 1984

"Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the revolution." 1984

It was 1949 when 1984 was first published, and here we are! Telescreens everywhere. How was Orwell able to see so clearly?

Remember, when you look out a window that others may be looking in at you. Big Brother is a natural peeping tom.