Jack (Adam Driver), an expert on Hitler-studies, and his wife Babette (Greta Gerwig), who conducts classes at the local community center, are the parents of a typical patchwork family, with three kids from previous marriages, Steffie (May Nivola), Denise (Raffey Cassidy) and Heinrich (Sam Nivola), and one son together, little Wilder (Henry Moore, Dean Moore), so their household is utter chaos most of the time, but nothing that can't be handled, and really the biggest concern for Jack of late is that Babette has lately taken to taking some pills called Dylar she refuses to talk about and that are not even on the market and unknown to the medical world. And then disaster hits their hometown when a gas truck crashes into a train carrying chemicals and causes a big explosion, and as a result a cloud of dangerous chemicals lingers over the city, forcing everyone to evacuate. During an effort Jack is forced to get out into the open to fill up their car with gas, and as such he might have been exposed to whatever it is that's in the cloud, and later he learns he might have been affected by it and might be slowly dying - but maybe so slowly that natural death will hit first, who's to say?

The chemical cloud has blown over in less than two weeks though, and everyone's allowed back in their homes, and everything's back to normal, only now Babette seems to be depressed all the time, and seems to lean towards forgetfulness. Jack and Denise, who has initially found out about her pill habit, blame this on Dylar, and still hit walls finding out anything about it. So ultimately Jack corners Babette, and she confesses to him that Dylar is an experimental drug that was to help her over her fear of dying - but the experiment failed. Still, she became hooked and thus had sex with Dr. Hookstratten (Kenneth Lonergan), who conducted the experiment, just to get her hands on more Dylar. This of course shocks Jack, but then he realizes that he has been afraid of death ever since he has been exposed to whatever it was, so now he wants Dylar - but Babette hasn't any left. But he finds an ad in the newspaper that leads directly to Hookstratten. But when he arrives at the address given to him, a dingy hotel, he hasn't yet decided whether he actually wants Dylar or shoot Hookstratten dead ...

Don Cheadle plays Jack's colleague who wants to become for Elvis-studies what Jack is for Hitler-studies ...

Now this is a very well-made film, especially scenes of chaos are expertly conducted, there's a lightfooted approach to things and plenty of irony, which sees to it that the film's dark themes don't throw the audience into depression, and the actors are all first rate - and yet this isn't exactly a great film, basically because the story never finds its own direction, is pretty much all over the place and seems to pull topics left and right out of the thin air that really do little to advance the story (even if they sometimes make good isolated stories). Now this might all work well in Don DeLillo's source novel (which I admit I haven't read), but it doesn't make a good movie, as there's just too much for the viewer to take in and process, which also makes the film's ultimatel pay-off almost a bit lame. That's not to say the film isn't in many parts enjoyable, it's just that the whole is a whole less than its parts.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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