Imaginaerum

Imaginaerum is one of those movies that will leave you confused for the first hour in to the movie. The bits and pieces of the soon fading memories of Thomas Whitman will confuse you and give more questions than answers. The last quarter of the movie will offer some explanations, but some will remain and the gaps in the life of Thomas Whitman are left up to the viewer to imagine.

The special effects are beautiful, but cannot compete with Hollywood movies with multi-million dollar budgets. Actors do their jobs pretty well, but some of them are not as convincing as you would like. Especially the young Gem Whitman leaves something to be desired. Francis X. McCarthy on the other hand is very convincing playing the role of the old demented song writer Thomas Whitman.

If you are a Nightwish fan, you'll get a kick out of this movie. If you have never heard of the band called Nightwish, you might enjoy it anyway if you are one of those people who like the fact that not everything is clear at the very beginning.

Overall, the movie is very touching once you get into it. It's not one of those "leave your brains at the door" movies because you really have to think and try to identify with the characters. With this movie, you can't expect things to be handed to you on a silver platter. Though something else might be...

Finnish Book of the Dead. Or perhaps of Dying. Or perhaps of Living? This film is imagined to life by the band Nightwish. Don't get me wrong - you can watch it even if you haven't heard of them at all. But it would be a bit like watching Dune without having read the books. If you are a Nightwish fan, this is a must see. I'm a fan myself, not die-hard, but still fan enough to have all their albums and having listened to them many times over. I loved seeing them in the film, I enjoyed seeing Tuomas, Marco and the rest very much. I used to cherish Tarja-era Nightwish and rejoice to hear Floor joining them, but I didn't appreciate Anette much and felt ashamed because of it. Now I'm happy to have shed my guilt and to appreciate Anette much more. But back to the film. Right away I have to draw a few parallels: The Velocity of Gary, The Book of Stars and Big Fish jumped to mind. Tim Burton has been rightly mentioned here already. This is a film to be contemplated and returned to and, as such, it is definitely not a kiddie movie. I've seen my fair share of fantasy flicks in my time and wasn't in the mood to add one more to the collection, but, as the story - or rather, the flashbacks of a fading mind - progresses, the fantasy becomes a visual framework to illustrate the story and the ideas behind it - and the story doesn't get beaten up and buried by special effects. That'll be the first, yeah? I wish Hollywood would learn this neat trick - to preserve the story, despite all the visual fireworks. Perhaps its the budget? If Hollywood would cut a few billions off the CGI department, maybe the movies would become better? Imaginaerum is beautiful as a whole: the special effects are stunning (unless you're a Transformers fan), the cast look like they really care about the story - which does become clearer towards the end - and it's all well carried by the soundscape (by Nightwish). I live and breathe science fiction and for me it is always about us, human beings (unless it is really badly written). Imaginaerum is - at least for me - about the human spirit, about our essence. It is about us striving to finish the last page of our story - even if everything around us - or we ourselves - is falling apart and fading into nothingness. "As for me," said the little prince to himself, "if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water." ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Having just finished watching this, and then reading the other reviews I am at a loss for all the fuss about the sub par special effects. They looked a lot better than the 250 million dollar Oz the Great and Powerful, which felt sadly fake in near every scene, and both movies are fantasy, so I saw nothing lacking in the special effects. The dialog in the opening of the movie for about 20 minutes is really just not great, but being a fan of Nightwish I stayed with the movie, and was glad to do so by the halfway mark. The other reviewers pointed out the homages so I will skip them. Coming at this film after seeing Tommy, The Wall, and Harry Potter films, I was not left in the lurch as many were about what was going on. I knew darn well I was seeing symbolism at every turn and was enthralled by it. The scene where the generations overlap in their pain was pure brilliance on the screen. I had never seen optics used in such a way to juxtapose two time periods and create a mood while still piling on the symbolism to even deeper meanings. The skipped words between characters in certain scenes is tasty for those who like being appreciated by the filmmakers to be smart enough to recognize what they were - like with the combination. It may not start out tidy but it gets that way. I was surprised by the idea that it was a movie with music and not a music movie. I was under the impression it would be more like Tommy than The Wall, it's not. The brief appearances by the band did leave me wanting way more, because I am fan of the group, but it didn't hurt the movie a bit. If only the beginning was as good as the rest I would give it all the stars, but it does open so poorly it would not be honest.

In few words Imaginaerum is a dive into a man's surreal dark dreams with superior strengths in terms of powerful images and music and some minor weaknesses in character development and acting. What may appear as another childish adventure at first quickly develops into an emotionally demanding journey dealing with very adult conflicts on a metaphorical and artistic level.

In detail Imaginaerum starts off rather associative. Really strong pictures and music (reminding me of Tim Burton movies) guide the audience from the very first second deep down the rabbit hole. The Scenery is especially impressive considering the budget of the movie. While technically being a convincing and easy show, scene jumps and plot appear rather cryptic at first. The movie succeeds at creating a rough and positively incomplete idea of the plot in your head quickly and developing that idea scene by scene throughout the whole movie without letting anything become too obvious or boring. The basic ideas appear metaphorical, yet decipherable and believable. I might add that Imaginaerum demands much (but not too much) of the viewer rationally as well as emotionally: It requires active thinking to follow the central plot and it is necessary to apply yourself to the emotions of the movie to understand the scenes. Not doing so will greatly decrease the value of the experience (and may result in questionable reviews some might have read so far).

The only downside to me is that there was unutilized potential of even deeper character development. They all started interesting but ended a little abrupt. In addition I was not totally convinced by some character acting. In some moments I got that "There is an actor playing a character"-feel which shouldn't come up. Surprisingly it didn't affect emotion and meaning of the movie too much so I can overlook that weakness easily. Having mentioned weaknesses I also want to mention that there were many great moments in terms of acting as well. For example I really enjoyed the great performance of actor Tuomas Holopainen!

Imaginaerum as a "band-movie": I don't consider myself a Nightwish fan even though I don't dislike their music. I was positively surprised that Imaginaerum, in contrast to other band movies, did not make it a 2 hours narcissistic music video. A few times the band is on screen but only adding positively to the atmosphere.

As being someone who enjoys strong images, demanding plots and artistic implementations I totally recommend this movie to my friends and to you. I advise parents to be cautious showing Imaginaerum to children, as some scenes "can be disturbing" (as other reviewers already mentioned) and the movie as a whole may be hard to understand. I personally recommend this above 12 years of age.

This very imaginary film is the most visionary depiction of dementia you'll ever see. A Tim-Burton-ish fantasy musical adventure, this is very unique and very different. At first glance not everything will make sense, so the film definitely deserves more than one viewing. If you're a Nightwish fan, there's the added bonus of the band members performing in the film as well. Their music was toned down and very effective. The film's visuals is striking and there's some really awesome super slow motion photography. What an absolutely beautiful film!