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.

Beam me up, there's no life down here. They're all holograms!

Beam me up! This is really something. Can we believe our eyes and ears anymore? Do we see what others see? Should we assume that others see what we see? I don't think we can assume this anymore.

When we sign up for certain types of music, the program profiles the user in order to create a music list that it thinks the user will like based upon past history. This means that each user is seeing a completely different list than another; that their world has become closed.

Cable television is working on similar technology, installing a sensor in the cable box which can tell who has walked in front of it, and will gear the programing to that person.

And as of last night, Nov. 4 CNN, is interviewing holograms! Except, they're not really holograms to those in the news room. The images are 2D, not 3D, but the person watching it from their living room doesn't know this, and may believe that the person is really there in front of the reporter. We are not seeing what the person in the newsroom is seeing. Soon, it may be, that everyone is seeing miracles and sublime things, while others don't.

And those that don't see the amazing images may be told that they don't have faith, don't believe, or haven't reached a heightened level of spirituality. This is amazing! Will Obama beam down from the White House for a Fireside Chat?