The Mourning

Slow as molasses, confusing, and nothing but loose ends at the end. You feel like you've been cheated after watching it. Pass on this one folks.

Once and a while, you come across movies where you don't have a clue what's going to occur in it from the start. And finally, the end credits run over the screen and you're still staring at it, wondering what you've just seen and what the hell it was about anyway. "The mourning" is such a film. A SF (I guess) about a Marine who pops up again after he disappeared on a mission in Operation Desert Storm 20 years ago. And as naked as a newborn suckling. "So what" you say uninterested. "That's what Schwarzenegger did already before in Terminator II. Maybe he came back on foot and walked for 20 years all the way from the desert back to his hometown." Well, that's a possibility, except that he still looks as young as when he disappeared. And now you think perhaps the beneficent effects of the sun has something to do with that or maybe he only consumed biologically healthy food which is good for the skin. But then there's also the astonishing fact that he can't speak a single word. Yeah, now I got your attention ... uhm ... or not ?

And so you have a summary of the first hour of this slow and boring movie. Aaron (Michael Rene Walton) awakens in his birthday suit somewhere in the middle of a forest (a bit similar to "Almost Human"), not knowing how he ended up there. The first thing I noticed when he went to his home town, was the complete desolation. There's no living soul in the vicinity of the city or in the city center itself. It seems like everyone is abducted. You need not to be clairvoyant to realize that almost everyone's mouth drops open from amazement when seeing this long-lost war hero. And then it's time for the tedious Question Time.

I stopped counting after a while so I really don't know how many times people asked that same question over and over again : "Aaron, where have you been been all that time ?". It's understandable that he can't explain it the first half hour, since he produces as much sound as a broken radio. But the moment he starts speaking again, the guy still refuses to give a sensible explanation. Believe me, that started to get on my nerves severely.

Of course you can work out different scenarios as an explanation for the peculiar behavior of Aaron. It could be that he suffers from PTSD and therefore lost his speaking skills because of the traumas. Or perhaps the entire movie was just a dream for him. Or maybe (drumroll) he was kidnapped by Martians and he peacefully lived for 20 long years in a Martian colony. Or worse, in all those years he was subjected to sadistic alien experiments. The cause of his silence would be due to the fact that he no longer knows how to speak, because he communicated during that period telepathically. There's also someone else convinced of that. An annoying woman with a ridiculous haircut who suddenly appears out of nowhere, so she can cross-examine Aaron all the time about that last possibility.

Ultimately, it's all guesswork in the end. You'll sit there in front of your television without any explanation or clearance. I like a profound movie from time to time. A movie with things not that clear and obvious. But this was absurd. So if you have some spare time and you want to spend it in a meaningless and purposeless way, I recommend you watch this empty creation. At least it was still of some use. And hopefully I haven't stepped on an alien creature's green long toes, so they come and abduct me!

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One of those Sci Fi films where the script writers weave a obscure mysterious tale and can't think of an ending. Incidentally, I'm going off American films on account of all the women are never plain and normal. They all seem like skinny anorexic long haired clones. This destroys realism and is very fattist Including the occasional typical woman in the street would greatly make films more real.

I can see this was a relatively low-budget effort, though it wasn't really obvious. Good acting, a mostly good screenplay, and a good story well handled. I like a movie which doesn't see an obligation to explain every little thing, but leaves us wondering on some things. It focusses on what we need to be intrigued and carried along with the story.

There were occasional implausible points which should have scripted better, but they're easy enough to get over.

Aside from the nudity at the start which was probably considered necessary to get the plot rolling (& couldn't be described as gratuitous), the rest of the movie was PG. I felt good that I'd selected it to watch it with my wife tonight.

I really liked this movie. It's an allegory for the huge topic of grieving the loss of a loved one and dealing with that loss and/or the guilt associated with that loss. I really love the use of science fiction to support the allegory. This to me is similar to the movie Colossal where science fiction is used to explore the dynamics of alcoholism. I love allegories and I love the allegorical use of science fiction to explore these important subjects. I rated this movie a 10, very moving. I guess you have to have experience with literature to appreciate it.