Mr. Nobody is a 2009 science fiction drama film written and directed by Jaco Van Dormael. An international co-production between Belgium, France, Germany, and Canada, it marks Van Dormael's first English-language feature. The film stars Jared Leto as Nemo Nobody, the last mortal on Earth after humanity has achieved quasi-immortality. As a 118-year-old man reflecting on his life, Nemo recounts alternative versions of his past, exploring the impact of key decisions through a nonlinear narrative that incorporates the multiverse hypothesis. The ensemble cast also includes Sarah Polley, Diane Kruger, Linh Dan Pham, Rhys Ifans, Natasha Little, Toby Regbo, and Juno Temple.
Van Dormael began developing Mr. Nobody in 2001, spending years crafting a screenplay that combined speculative science, experimental cinema, and motifs of human emotion. Filming took place from June to September 2007 across Belgium, Germany, and Canada, with cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne using 35mm film. This was followed by an extensive post-production process, including visual effects, which took a year and a half to complete. The film marked the final collaboration with composer Pierre Van Dormael, the director's brother, who died shortly after completing the score.
Mr. Nobody premiered on 12 September 2009 at the 66th Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Osella. Following creative differences with studio executives, the film's release strategy was revised to include a limited theatrical run, which began in Belgium and France on 13 January 2010, before expanding to streaming in international markets. The film received positive reviews from critics, who praised its screenplay, visual style, musical score, and cast performances, although its narrative structure sparked some debate. It won the André Cavens Award from the Belgian Film Critics Association and was nominated for seven Magritte Awards, winning six, including Best Film and Best Director for Van Dormael.
Plot
In 2092, humanity has conquered mortality. The world watches as 118-year-old Nemo Nobody, the last mortal, approaches death. Psychiatrist Dr. Feldheim uses hypnosis to help Nemo remember his life. A journalist also interviews Nemo, whose recollections are from three points in his life: ages 9, 15, and 34. Nemo makes contradictory statements, describing his past as having unfolded in multiple ways. He says that, before birth, children know everything that will happen in their lives, but at the moment of conception the Angels of Oblivion erase the knowledge. He says the Angels missed him, allowing him to "remember" his different possible futures.
After his parents' divorce, 9-year-old Nemo had to choose whether to live with his mother or his father. He describes what happened in both scenarios.
Life with his mother
Nemo and his mother move to Montreal. When he is a teenager, he is attracted to Anna. At the beach, Anna asks Nemo to swim with her and her friends. He insults her friends, and they hardly see each other again.
In an alternate timeline, Nemo admits to Anna that he cannot swim, and they spend time together. Anna's father Harry marries Nemo's mother, and the step-siblings begin an affair, pledging their lives to one another. Harry and Nemo's mother divorce, and Anna goes to New York with her father. The teenagers lose touch. Years later, Nemo and Anna pass at a train station and immediately recognize each other. After a passionate reunion, Anna says she is not ready for a relationship. She asks Nemo to call her and meet at a lighthouse, but he loses her number. Nemo waits at the lighthouse every day, but Anna does not come.
In another timeline, Anna and Nemo are married with children. He works at a television studio. Driving home, he loses control of his car, plummets into a lake, and drowns.
Life with his father
As a teenager, Nemo lives in England with his disabled father and is writing a science fiction story about a journey to Mars. He falls in love with Elise, whose boyfriend is 22-year-old Stefano. Nemo has a motorcycle accident and is hospitalized in a vegetative state or pseudocoma. He can still perceive the world and detects his parents' reunion at his bedside. He imagines his fingers on his typewriter keyboard and continues working on his story.
In another timeline, Elise says she is in love with Stefano, but he does not love her. Nemo assures her of his feelings until she gives in, and they marry. In one version of this timeline, Elise dies in an explosion on their wedding day, and Nemo takes her ashes to Mars as he had promised when they were teenagers. On the way back to Earth he meets Anna, but the ship is destroyed by asteroids. In another version, one of Nemo's television studio coworkers drowns in the lake. Their widow is Anna, whom Nemo feels he has seen before. Another timeline has Nemo and Elise married with three children. Elise has borderline personality disorder and chronic depression and, despite Nemo's attempts to save their marriage, leaves him to pursue Stefano.
Alternately, after being rejected by Elise, teenage Nemo resolves to marry the first girl who dances with him, who turns out to be Jean. Though they marry, have two sons, and become rich, Nemo is bored and puts all of his assets in Jean's name and leaves. Making decisions via coin toss, he claims to be the person for whom a chauffeur is waiting. He is taken to a hotel where he is murdered and his body is dumped in the woods by the assassins, who question whether they have killed the right man.
Adult Nemo also repeatedly awakens in a surreal environment dominated by argyle patterns. Following clues that he finds in this world, he arrives at a dilapidated house with a DVD player and television. In an interactive video, 118-year-old Nemo tells 34-year-old Nemo that this is a universe where Nemo was never born, and his consciousness is stuck in limbo. Old Nemo states that he is experiencing the story from the end, and that adult Nemo must stay alive until 5:50 a.m. on 12 February 2092.
In epilogue, Old Nemo tells the journalist that neither of them exists — they are figments of 9-year-old Nemo's imagination as he struggles to choose between his parents. The boy is trying to choose by tracing the potential outcomes. He takes a third option: leaving both parents for an unknown future.
Near death, Nemo recalls reuniting with Anna at the lighthouse. The moment of his death arrives, and his last word, "Anna", is broadcast. The universe ceases to expand and begins to contract. The flow of time reverses, old Nemo comes back to life and cackles joyously. The other Nemos come back to life and Nemo's parents get back together. 9-year-old Nemo runs in reverse to 9-year-old Anna and they reverse-skip stones together.
Cast
Jared Leto as Nemo Nobody (both 34- and 118-years-old). Nemo is Latin for "nobody". Leto described the role by saying, "Mr. Nobody is everyone and no one all at the same time, an illusion, the product of his own dreams. He's love, he's hope, he's fear, he's life, and he's death. This is without doubt the most complex character I've ever played. It was a challenge to keep all these lives concentrated into one character for the duration of the filming without losing myself. But we had outlines and things that helped me to keep track of where we were." Toby Regbo as Nemo (aged 15) Thomas Byrne as Nemo (aged 9) Noa De Costanzo as Nemo (aged 5) Sarah Polley as Elise. Polley was the first actor to be cast in the film. She described Elise as "a young woman who carries a lot of love inside her." She yearns to be the best of mothers but just can't do it. She's frustrated because of this inability to live the way she would like to live, all of this stemming from her depression. She doesn't understand why she can't pull out of it. Over time, she develops a feeling of shame and guilt towards her husband and her children." Clare Stone as Elise (age 15) Diane Kruger as Anna. Kruger described Anna as "the most complete of all the characters. She never makes any compromises, in any one of her lives. She gets married and keeps her promise until the end: she will not fall in love with anyone else." Actress Eva Green was originally reported to have been cast in the role. Juno Temple as Anna (age 15) Laura Brumagne as Anna (age 9) Linh Dan Pham as Jean. Pham said that Jean "loves Nemo Nobody with a passion, but he doesn't love her. Their meeting was a misunderstanding. She thought he was honest and full of love for her. But as soon as they start a family she realizes that something is missing in their relationship, that he's never really there. It also shows that lives that seem perfect on paper might not be so perfect in reality." Audrey Giacomini as Jean (age 15) Rhys Ifans as Nemo's Father. Van Dormael chose Ifans for the part after seeing his "multifaceted" performances in Notting Hill (1999) and Enduring Love (2004). Natasha Little as Nemo's Mother. Little was suggested for the part by the casting director in London. Van Dormael said that "her role was decisive for the film: it was necessary that the mother should destroy the childhood happiness but that one would feel the need to go with her at the same time. That's what Natasha managed to achieve." Allan Corduner as Dr. Feldheim Daniel Mays as Young Journalist Michael Riley as Harry, Anna's father Harold Manning as TV Host Ben Mansfield as Stefano (both 22- and 40-years-old), teenage-Elise's boyfriend Chiara Caselli as a beggar in the railway station
Director Jaco Van Dormael makes a cameo appearance as Brazilian Man, and Pascal Duquenne, one of the stars of Dormael's previous film The Eighth Day, also has a cameo as Henry.
Production Writing The idea of parallel lives had been explored in earlier films such as Run Lola Run (1998) and Sliding Doors (1998), which influenced Jaco Van Dormael's writing of Mr. Nobody. Unlike those films, however, this one has philosophical underpinnings inspired by scientific tomes on chaos theory and the butterfly effect, pigeon superstition, and the space-time continuum. Van Dormael stated: "My starting point was a 12-minute short I made in 1982 called È pericoloso sporgersi. A kid runs behind a train with two possible choices: to go with his mother or with his father. From there we follow two possible futures. I started one version based on the fact that a woman jumps or doesn't jump on a train. Then Sliding Doors by Peter Howitt came out, followed by Run Lola Run by Tom Tykwer. I had to find something else. And that's when I realised that the story I was trying to tell was not binary, that I was above all interested by the multiplicity and complexity of choices. With this screenplay I wanted to make the viewer feel the abyss that is the infinity of possibilities. Beyond this, I wanted to find a different way of telling a story. I wanted the gaze of the child on his future to meet the gaze of the old man he has become on his past. I wanted to talk about complexity through cinema, which is a simplifying medium. While reality around us is more and more complex, the information is more and more succinct, political speeches are more and more simplistic. What interests me is complexity. Not the simple answers, which are reassuring but bound to be false."
Describing the scale of the film, the director said, "My producers don't like me saying it, but it's really a big-budget experimental film about the many different lives one person can live, depending on the choices he makes. It's about the infinite possibilities facing any person. There are no good or bad choices in life. It's simply that each choice will create another life for you. What's interesting is to be alive."
While producing the film, Van Dormael took the unique step of publishing his screenplay.
Development