“Mr. Nobody” is a Belgian science fiction drama film directed by Jaco Van Dormael. The film tells the story of Nemo (Nobody), a 118-year-old man who is the last mortal on Earth, as the entire human race has achieved immortality. Nemo narrates his life story in fragments to a young journalist and his psychiatrist. The narrative includes moments of his love for “the three women” in his life and his parents’ divorce. Different parallel realities present the accompanying challenges in the three major choices of his life.

The days leading to his death become the subject of a reality show broadcast to immortals worldwide. Nemo himself claims not to remember anything about his past, so the psychiatrist attempts to revive his memories through hypnosis. Other memories are shared with the journalist. The entire film is sprinkled with random segments (parallel realities) of Mr. Nobody’s memories, which provide conflicting stories about his life. It’s unclear which of these memories are real and which are potential developments in Nemo’s life that never happened. The film has a tree-like structure: starting from the birth of the main character, the viewer witnesses all possible variations of his life, forming the branches.

The fundamental question remains – the one about Choice! The film illustrates how:

Birth

At the beginning of the story, it’s explained that before a child is born, they know everything that will happen in their life, but the frequencies of forgetfulness place a finger on the child’s lips.

First, the child needs to choose their parents. The second choice they face is the result of their parents’ separation. Another choice is required – with whom to live. This scene unfolds at a train station. The mother leaves on a train, and the father stays on the platform. In different realities, Nemo either runs and catches the train, and in the moment of the unmade choice, his mother manages to pull him onto the train, or his father hugs him on the platform.

Life with Mother

Nemo stays with his mother and her new partner, Harry, but they don’t get along well. Nemo acts rebelliously, claiming he can predict the future. He meets the daughter of his mother’s partner, Anna. Again, the choice divides the realities – in one case, he regrets his words throughout his life, and many years later, meeting Anna with her two children leads to sorrow and regret.

Honesty in the second case foretells other events and another reality – she stays with him and becomes Nemo’s first love. They are happy, but when Harry and Nemo’s mother separate, Anna is forced to go to New York with her father, losing contact with Nemo. Years later, Nemo hopes to meet Anna again. The desire is strong, and they meet, recognizing each other in the crowd of people. Anna is not ready for a relationship, and the events lead to endless hope.

Life with Father

Nemo stays with his father, who becomes disabled. Taking care of him turns Nemo into an unsociable, silent person. He works in a store and writes science fiction stories about a journey to Mars in his spare time.

Parallel realities are shaped by his choices regarding Elise. In one choice.

He sees Elise with her 22-year-old boyfriend and despairs, but while riding his motorcycle through the forest, he falls and is taken to the hospital in a paralyzed state. He can feel but can’t move. The illusion of gathered parents encourages him to start moving.

In the second choice, a parallel reality unfolds.

Developing along a different script – Nemo talks to Elise in front of her house, but she rejects him. Nemo persuades her of his feelings, and in the end, Elise marries him. One version leads to catastrophe, and in the other version, he works in a television studio. On his way home, he sees a colleague’s car being pulled out of the lake. At the funeral, Nemo meets the colleague’s wife, who turns out to be Anna. One of the parallel realities reveals that Nemo and Elise are married with three unhappy children, and Elise suffers from chronic depression. Despite Nemo’s efforts to balance things, Elise leaves him.

In another possibility of the choice, after Elise rejects Nemo, he marries the first girl he meets that night. Nemo commits to what he later describes as a foolish decision: “First, I won’t leave anything to chance again. Second, I’ll marry the girl on my motorcycle. Third, I’ll be rich. Fourth, we’ll have a big house, a yellow house, with a garden and two children – Paul and Michael. Fifth, I’ll have a convertible, a red convertible, and I’ll learn to swim. Sixth, I won’t stop until I’ve achieved it all!”

Having achieved his plans, Nemo is unhappy, and his decisions are like flipping a coin. When he checks into a hotel room, he is killed accidentally in the bathroom and burned in the forest.

In an abstract reality, Nemo is in an unfamiliar world dominated by diamonds. Following the instructions he finds, he reaches an abandoned house where he accidentally discovers a video in which the 118-year-old Nemo explains that he doesn’t exist, and reality is an illusion. Various parallel pictures reveal that either his parents never met, or his father died in a sledding accident, or his mother didn’t become pregnant, or a prehistoric ancestor was killed.

Before his death, Nemo tells the journalist that the world is simply thought – everything is in the mind of Mr. Nobody as a 9-year-old boy when he had to make a choice. And for the third, fourth time, this choice is made, and Nemo dies. At this moment, the energy of the unfolding of the Universe reverses, and time runs backward towards Nothingness and the Here and Now. The impossibility of going back to the past makes the viewer realize the importance of making choices. Without a choice, everything remains possible within an existing but unexperienced Potential.

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