As a child (age 7) we see him given a choice by his divorcing parents of who to go live with, we also see him given a teddy by each, one shabby given by his poor but loving father and the other clean and new given by his uptight, workaholic mother. Yet we never see who he chooses.
As an adolescent (age 17) we witness his choice between two girls, one who is the perfect idea of a wife and the other who is reckless yet who he believes to be his soulmate, once again we never see his choice. He owns two rings one destined for either girl. (Roxanne and Lily)
And last we witness him in his adult life where we discover that he is now a widower, (age 37) the chosen wife having died not long ago. Here we witness his last decision, having received a letter after a brain scan that he has early onset Alzheimer's. In an appointment with a doctor he is given the choice of taking a course of pills that will cure him of the disease but remove all previous memory of his life, or leave the disease to run on in the normal way, we know now that he chose to keep his remaining memories for now, so he can keep remembering them.
Back in the present day, we see a chart rested on a table with someone packing things into a box next to it. The details say that the man died earlier that day, and as we focus on the box of belongings we see what choices he made in life. Here we also see a picture of the man at the same old age smiling at reliving his life at a time before and finding that he made the right choices.
Inspiration for this idea the film Mr. Nobody which looks at the last mortal man alive who cannot remember which life he led, overlapping are three different versions of his life in the end no real conclusion is reached which is a little bit (a lot) more complex than mine.
(I discarded the domestic violence idea after feeling it could have become very clichéd and has been done many times before)
No comments:
Post a Comment