Mr. Baum

After visiting his doctor, Mr. Baum is advised that he has an aggressive cancer tumor and only ninety-two minutes of life. He tries to contact his wife, partner, mother, friends and daughter, but none of them has much time to spend with him. He finally dies on his bed. I watched 'The 92 Minutes of Mr. Baum' with the expectation to see a great movie. The storyline is wonderful: 'What would you do if you know that you have just 92 minutes of life?' Further, this film was released by the Brazilian distributor 'Cult Filmes', specialized in independent movies, and usually their titles are excellent. However, I found a very boring surrealistic dark comedy, indeed an pretentious intellectual crap. The story goes nowhere. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): 'Os 92 Minutos do Sr. Baum' ('The 92 Minutes of Mr. Baum')

I'm giving an overview of the movie here. Mr. Baum went to his doctor for the results of some tests. He was told (after the doctor's convoluted computations) that he has an aggressive cancer and has only 90-92 minutes to live. Mr. Baum then decided to wrap things up and called and met several people close to him. The rest of the film showed how Mr. Baum used his 92 minutes and how people reacted to his actions.

Actually, the audience acted as members of a group touring a museum of sorts in honor of Mr. Baum (a device shown in the movie itself). Inside the museum, the guide would comment on several items, notes, and even a snap shot of Mr. Baum which traced his last few minutes. We were given a treat when some thoughts were 'recorded' and we were shown the dream-thoughts of Mr. Baum of what he thought would happen in several scenarios.

All in all, the film was a good movie because of its interesting script, characters and devices. Long after the film, one might yet think about Mr. Baum and how one will spend his last few minutes on earth.

Very freudian and critical of religion is the undertone I got from this movie. The fact that the jewish mentality or Israeli mentality was the celebration of life. Yet we see the Israelis doing things completely unreligious, smoking, felating, teen sex, sex with a sales girl in a drugstore asile, ironically talking about death and life, and our main character refusing to talk about it. THe very end of the movie, we have the two burial helpers saying, "theres no plan, you live and thats it." My guess is that this film had some controversy when it was released, its more critical of Jewish spiritual beleifs, and honest about the way humans and Jews look at death and afterlife. In one scene, he wants to jump into an ambulance telling them he only has a half hour to live. THe ambulance people shove him out telling him that with a half hour he can "call God."