His character struck many similiarities with Jesus. The way he touched the hands of people who survived...the way he comforted that little boy...that haunting, yet gorgeous music...and when he sobbed together with his wife, saying, "I'm alive, I'm alive."
I liked the movie, but bleah, you made it sound so nauseatingly sugar-sweet, it almost sickened me. Just because he was a little comforting & touchy-feely, he emulated
Jesus? A lot of people touch others warmly like that, and comfort others during times of stress/disaster...big deal. It's commendable & humanitarian, but I wouldn't say Jesus-like. Would Jesus have wanted to have a sexual relationship with his new girl friend outside of his marriage? I don't think so. The
only reason Max didn't have more of a physical relationship with Carla is because she didn't want to at first (even when they kissed, she said she "didn't want to be kissed" but he did anyway), and then a bit later on, when she started falling in love with him, she went & talked to Max's wife, and realized she
had to walk away from the friendship, in order for it to
not progress any further, so Max would go back to his family where he belonged. I think Carla knew what he wanted - when she visited him in the hospital, after the driving the car into the wall incident, he suggested they just "run away together somewhere." And even though Carla had just kicked her boyfriend out, she really did not want to go off with Max & have a life with him. He helped her find her way back to the land of the living, so to speak, but Max was still stuck in limbo, therefore a relationship wouldn't work. It's only after Max almost dies from the allergic reaction to the strawberry at the end, does he
finally snap out of being stuck in limbo, and he chooses to live, and be with his family.
Maybe Jesus had doubts and conflicting thoughts & emotions too about his life...who can really ever know...but Max was a bit suicidal. He stood in front of a train, almost jumped off a roof, drove his speeding car into a wall not only endangering his own life but someone else's just to prove a point (which personally I found rather disturbing). I don't think Jesus ever was suicidal; or if he was, the Bible never specifies it.
It was a touching ending, but just because it was emotional doesn't mean it's the greatest movie of all time. Just because people get emotional or have an emotional connection to characters & what they go through during a movie, they equate that with the movie being "good." I can think of a lot of stellar performances by actors that are very emotion-evoking, but they happen in some very badly made movies! A good performance is not the only thing that makes a movie great; there are
many more things that go into making a near-perfect movie than
just emotion-evoking moments. I'm not just talking about this movie, I mean in general. There are a lot of movies that brought a tear to my eye, but that doesn't make them perfect or one of the "finest movies of all time," even if they are one of my own personal favorites.
This movie was better than a lot of movies but IMO it's 6/10,
maybe 7/10. It was slow at times, a little boring here & there, and without Jeff Bridges & Isabella Rossillini's caliber acting, the movie might even be squarely mediocre. The subject is not even really all that unique ~ there are a lot of movies about the euphoria followed by severe depression/guilt that survivors of traumatic disasters typically go through. It had a sweet, tear-jerker ending made a little more unique because of the surreal vision he had as he was dying, but other than that it wasn't really anything special.
"Everybody's got something to hide, except for
meat and
my monkey!" ~Rocko
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