Samuel Ogden

This is an engrossing but unsettling metaphorical disquisition on the power of “big ideas,” literary, spiritual and political, and the relationship between the artist, guru, political thinker and the great mass of people who are desperately searching for some kind of meaning or fulfillment from outside themselves. This search for fulfillment from art or religion or politics is shown here as a basically selfish impulse, just as the writer’s love for his wife and child are selfish, a need for the validation and approval at a personal level that he also desperately craves In the public sphere. She doesn’t come off much better initially, passive and needy and looking to the “great man,” the artist, to fulfill her. When she becomes pregnant, the reality of who and what we actually are becomes increasingly clear to her. Days later, I still find myself thinking about love, of other people in general and intimately connected individuals in particular and what it means. This was a thought provoking movie, and besides that, it moves right along.