Jaco Van Dormael spent years building a film about a man who cannot stop choosing. Mr. Nobody asks what happens when every choice keeps happening at once.
Trailer, via Lionsgate Canada.
Nemo Nobody at 118
In 2092, humanity has conquered mortality. Nemo Nobody is the last mortal man alive, 118 years old, and the world watches him die. Jared Leto plays him at both 34 and 118. Dr. Feldheim, played by Allan Corduner, uses hypnosis to pull memories loose. A journalist, played by Daniel Mays, interviews him too. Nemo’s recollections land at ages 9, 15 and 34, and they contradict each other.
Leto called the part the most complex character he has ever played. “Mr. Nobody is everyone and no one all at the same time, an illusion, the product of his own dreams,” he said. “He’s love, he’s hope, he’s fear, he’s life, and he’s death.”
The Divorce and the Angels
After his parents split, 9-year-old Nemo must choose between his mother and his father. The film plays out both. With his mother he moves to Montreal and meets Anna. At the beach she asks him to swim with her friends; he insults them and the friendship stalls. In another version he admits he cannot swim, and they stay close. Her father Harry marries Nemo’s mother, the step-siblings start an affair, the parents divorce, and Anna leaves for New York.
Years later they spot each other at a train station. She asks him to call and meet at a lighthouse. He loses her number and waits there every day. She never comes.
Nemo explains the mechanism early: before birth, children know everything ahead of them, until the Angels of Oblivion wipe it clean at conception. He says the angels missed him.
Cast and Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2001 | Van Dormael begins developing the film |
| June–September 2007 | Filming in Belgium, Germany and Canada |
| 2009 | Post-production finishes after a year and a half |
| 12 September 2009 | Premieres at the 66th Venice International Film Festival |
| 2009 | Wins the Golden Osella |
| Character | Actor | The actor’s read |
|---|---|---|
| Nemo Nobody | Jared Leto | “Everyone and no one all at the same time” |
| Elise | Sarah Polley | Carries love she cannot live out; shame follows |
| Anna | Diane Kruger | “The most complete of all the characters” |
| Jean | Linh Dan Pham | Loves Nemo; he does not love her |
Polley was the first actor cast. She described Elise as a woman who yearns to be the best of mothers and cannot manage it, with depression underneath the failure. Kruger said Anna never compromises in any of her lives and keeps her promise to the end. Pham said Jean’s meeting with Nemo was a misunderstanding.
What Holds and What Slips
The craft is real. Christophe Beaucarne shot on 35mm, and the film is Van Dormael’s first English-language feature, a co-production between Belgium, France, Germany and Canada. Composer Pierre Van Dormael, the director’s brother, finished the score shortly before his death. It was their last collaboration.
The problem is the mechanism. Once Nemo can hold every life at once, no life carries weight. Anna at the lighthouse should be the film’s wound, and it lands as one option among several. The Angels of Oblivion are a lovely idea and a cheap escape hatch.
Leto is doing genuine work inside a structure that keeps letting him off the hook. Kruger gets the most out of the least screen time. Polley’s Elise is the only thread that hurts, because her sadness has a cause and a cost.
Mr. Nobody is ambitious, sincere, and too pleased with its own architecture. It wants to be about how a life is the sum of the roads not taken. It ends up about how a film can avoid choosing.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
