One of my favorite movies of all time is Mr. Nobody.

I have seen it countless times and

yet I am always more delighted with it. Mr. Nobody is a 2009 Belgian film directed by
Jaco Van Dormael. The story takes place in the year 2092 where humanity has finally
achieved immortality. In this strange new world, all eyes are focused on Nemo Nodoby,
the last mortal human being who is slowly aging towards death. Little is known about
Nemo and any attempts to uncover who he is or where he came from, leads to a
multitude of contradictory stories. As a young boy, His parents divorced and Nemo had
to face one of the most difficult decisions in life. Either go live with his mother or stay
with his father. But this is the first of many decisions that cause Nemo’s history to
fracture and diverge into multiple timelines. He went to live with his mother and at the
same time he stayed with his father. But how is that possible? The result is a rather
confusing collection of alternative realities that Nemo lived through. Each of these lives
are completely different and contain different experiences and lessons that one way or
another Nemo have lived them all. But I believe that all this complexity serves one
single purpose, one fundamental question. How do we make meaningful choices?
Mr. Nobody interlace different theories about the universe such as: The chaos theory,
the butterfly effect, the big bang, the big crunch, and other philosophical explanations
about before and after death in order to emphasize the dissonance between how we
perceive causality and how the universe actually works. In other words, we may believe
that our choices and actions affect the world in a certain way, but in reality, we know
very little about what forces move our lives into certain directions. That’s why when
unexpected things happen, either bad ones or good ones, we always wonder “What did
I do to deserve this?”.
The movie purpose it’s about recognizing that there is no right path. So instead of
desperately searching the universe for guidance, for a sign or a reasonable argument
that tells us what we should do, it is we ourselves who have to make our choices
meaningful. Ruth Chang, professor of philosophy at oxford university says that when
engaging difficult choices, we shouldn’t look outward, we should look inward. We should
create reasons for ourselves.
Even if we believe we are on the right path, there will be mistakes and sorrow. We all
experience moments of regret, where we desperate long for that reset button to give us
another chance. A chance to say what we really meant, to show courage when we were
afraid, to be the person we really wanted to be. But if we base our decisions on our
most inner voices, even if it is for a brief instance, our lives can be profoundly
meaningful.
“Every path is the right path. Everything could’ve been anything else. And it would have
just as much meaning.” This is my favorite quote from the movie. And I think it can be
completely described by it