Mr. Lonely (2007)
*spoilers abound
what a bizarro little world to dive into, what heartbreak and delight and confusion to encounter in two parallel stories: one of a Michael Jackson impersonator and the dysfunctional commune of impersonators he lives with for a spell and the tender unrealized relationship that develops between Michael and the Marilyn Monroe impersonator who introduces him to this commune, and also, without any explicit connection to Michael's life at the commune, a sisterhood of blue-garbed nuns who discover their ability to jump from airplanes and fly safely through the air with only the grace of God to keep them from the ground.
the narrative of Mr. Lonely caught me off guard with it's implicit sadness on its sleeve, yet many jaunts into rambling silliness and pure beautiful image. in the slow motion opening sequence, Michael (in full costume, as he mostly appears throughout the film) rides a pocket bike on a track with a stuffed Bubbles monkey bobbing alongside him on a stick. he appears next on a Paris street, performing Michael Jackson's signature moves behind a plastic tip bucket. passersby pause, there's a cut in the footage, but they remain in frame, noncommittal but lingering, unimpressed yet intrigued by Michael's display.
at a senior center where he's been hired to perform, Michael--we only ever know him as Michael--delivers a disjointed sermon of joy and return to childhood to a room full of the most decrepit elderly people ever cast. in this scene, Michael meets Marilyn for the first time, and for what seems to be the first time in a long time, maybe the first time ever, breaks his wall of loneliness.
they get a drink--red wine, he doesn't drink coffee. and she invites him back to her home beyond the city, an idealistic haven full of people just like them, where they can build a perfect world together, where they keep (ill fated) sheep and where they will perform, as a cast entirely of impersonators on a homemade stage, "the greatest show on earth".
with some urging, Michael, who has nothing and nobody keeping him in Paris, capitulates and joins Marilyn on her journey home to her husband, an abusive, sadistic Charlie Chaplin, and daughter, Shirley Temple, and their home in a castle on a lake.
we visit the nuns, led by Werner Herzog as a rambling priest, as they broad a tiny plane to drop deliveries of food to an isolated community. as the nuns begin their bombardment, one sister falls from the airplane. long terror in the blue, and then the ground rushes up. the footage cuts. the blue-garbed sister sits up in the tall grass and rides, stumbling, disoriented but unharmed. God is good.
in the closing arcs of the film, I felt the most tenderness and sadness about the fate of the characters, which in such an unaligned way feels like a commentary on the human condition.
after their show flops, the commune members leave their handmade playhouse, humming together in a night scene march mostly by bobbing flashlights. as they return to the castle, the flashlight beams expose the consequences of the night: Marilyn, hanging in a tree, dead by her own hand.
back in his Paris apartment after leaving the commune, Michael paints the faces of his former comrades on eggs. in a dreamlike sequence, these egg faces turn into the live faces of their impersonator counterparts and begin to sing. the camera revisits each face before landing finally on Marilyn. the song ends. she and Michael exchange final words--she isn't saddened by her own passing, she just had to move on. and for Michael, this non answer seems enough like closure.
in the real world, when someone departs from you, their life, this existence in such a way, you often visit them in your sleeping or waking dreams. you often imagine the explanation they would have for you, and sometimes you make them--this idealized version of your loved one--give it to you. this visitation by Michael is ridiculous--visions of singing egg faces, who'd think up that, it's insane--but it feels like the real life ridiculousness and messiness of only getting to say goodbye to someone after they've left you for good. and yes, I cried.
let's return to the nuns, who at this point have all taken to the sky to test their devotion. they fall through the brilliant flat blue, four of them joining hands in a shape evocative of a cross.
once again on the ground, the priest/pilot announces that they will fly to Rome to meet the pope and tell the world of this miracle. but in the closing sequence of the movie, we open onto a foreign beach at dusk, where the lifeless bodies of the nuns tumble in the surf while remnants of their plane burn on shore.
life is utterly nonsensical, meaningless, populated by silly adults who are sometimes kind but often petty and cruel and even more often no more mature than children. life is full of painterly moments of beauty. life evades our attempts to give it a meaning, just as we in turn evade the crush of self actualization.