Such a frustrating disappointment

Just so...so bad

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

To appreciate this movie, or at the very least the portrait that it tries to create, you have to understand the mind of someone with OCD. If you can't relate to the main character, then you'll probably find it very empty and pointless, because the film is essentially all about exploring a world of self-imposed deprivation, and all the bells and whistles that come with that. There's no deeper meaning; there are no overlapping plot tangents other than a briefly explored backstory to how our main protagonist got with his wife, and fought hard to get her, competing with his friend. This serves very importantly to show the force of will, ingenuity and determination that someone like this can and often does possess despite their frailties. The rest is all about exploring the journey which leads a successful, talented and hard working person to this sort of a life of scarcity.Personally, despite the film's shortcomings, I can relate very strongly to the film because I've lived it, minus wife and kids. I believe that in fact, a lot of people have experienced these moments of personal retreat to varying degrees, and it just often doesn't get exposed for what it is. Howard Hughes would famously lock himself in his room for extended periods, and live those moments of his life consisting of the most meagre quality of sustenance, one such time when he binge watched every single Katherine Hepburn film after having become enamored with her.In my case, when my disability made it so that I could no longer work, it very similarly forced me to retreat into myself as a desperate means to cling onto my independence. I'd just sold my house, and in the course of this, bought some properties up north to maintain some rental income to help support myself. Anyone who's undergone a serious move knows that it can be one of the most stressful experiences of one's life. Coupled with being in agonizing pain all throughout, the physical ordeal made things all the worse. We still hadn't secured a new property as our main residence, and were spending a couple weeks living in a filthy smoke infested basement suite. Right at the same time my renter had moved on, so I had to go down to the city and rent out my office unit, which at this point, despite being an ordeal in and of itself, was a welcome excuse to get away from it all.Once I got to the city is where things started to unravel, you might say. After I arrived, I had several rendez-vous to make: replace the keys, set up appointments, obtain internet, acquire furniture etc. At the end of the day, in complete agony, laying on a couch in an empty office unit staring at the ceiling, you're surprised to find yourself in a state of sweet surrender that's suddenly much more appealing than you ever thought it would be. You ask yourself "what's it going to hurt if I stay here for a few days to get my strength back?" Days turn into weeks, and before long you've made arrangements to replace your mobile internet with a full contract including landline telephone. We'd just got our new place, and I could have returned home after just a few days. A few days however, turned into 9 months.My experience was nowhere near as extreme as the one depicted in the film, of course. You can't COMPLETELY cut yourself off from the world around you while living in an office unit, and you do maintain many creature comforts: air conditioning, internet, refrigeration. Arguably you can't really cut yourself off to that extent while living in a garage attic either, so the film kind of forced the subject to an unrealistic extent. VERY unbelievable that a family, and indeed an entire neighborhood had nobody of sound mind to clock on that there was a familiar looking "homeless dude" living in a garage for months on end. The only ones to caught on were some special needs kids who in turn brought the guy food and supplies without telling a soul. You'd think this would attract MORE attention, but apparently not. While the plot integrity of the film may have been extremely lacking, it's still hard not to appreciate the portrait that it was trying to give us.It all comes back to self-imposed deprivation. Once you challenge your concept of what is and isn't normal or status quo, what may have seemed unthinkable becomes comfortable. You spend weeks living off canned fish, you pee in bottles, you give yourself sponge baths, and yes you sit around in your underwear most times to avoid stinky clothes, curtains drawn of course, as lawyers and accountants conduct business all around you. People come knocking on your door. At first you don't know how to respond, and by the time you're committed to showing yourself, the person has gone. Subsequently you become adamant about never answering your door. When the visits intensify you go out and print 10 or so signs saying "no soliciting" and literally "go away!" and plaster them all over your window. You then hear chatter "Some guy has locked himself in his office," but you don't care in the slightest. Instead you sit alone peering out your window watching people come and go and musing about all the familiar souls you see, all EXACTLY as depicted in this film, and yes, you quickly learn that it's impossible for anyone to see through the cracks of drawn blinds into a dark room. It's only possible to see out because the eyes simply can't focus on the dark of a surface that's mostly light. In the end, you spend most of your days in a dark room with the lights out, and it's true, people really don't know whether anyone is home half the time.The question is, why do it? I can imagine a lot of people would find this film ridiculous because they can't imagine how ANYONE could get to this point. The answer is really quite simple. If you're someone with OCD, you want everything to be perfect. If for whatever reason you find yourself at an impasse where things CAN'T be perfect and there's nothing you can do about it, rather than settle for mediocrity, you settle for something much much less. Why? Because whatever you're settling for is something you can control, and that's what it's about. When you hear of "hoarders," it's the exact same concept.At one point in my life I was a world traveler, and I fantasize about a time when I can do that again, so really this is fully different from something like agoraphobia, but even back then I can see how the same type of behaviour played out. In Asia for example, I was paranoid at the idea of taxi drivers cheating me on fares or bringing me somewhere against my will, so I insisted on walking every single place I went, 3 hour treks sometimes, hiking through the urban forest of concrete. In Auckland, I showed up at a hostel, and couldn't fathom the idea of staying in a grotty room with 6 other people, so instead I adopted a polyphasic sleep cycle and decided to stay nowhere, effectively living homeless for about 10 days. These are the things you do to maintain control. The film is about a man who feels weak, unimportant, unappreciated and desperately needs that sense of control back in his life, but doesn't know how to get it, so he retreats into himself. In the end it's an amazing character study and I appreciated this aspect of it, despite its faults.

What would happen if the movie was only just two min more long? Just wanted to what happens when he came back. It's really disappointing.

The ending: This movie is fantasy, so why are so many people disappointed in the ending? Maybe he was never gone at all. Maybe the whole movie happened in just one day, inside his head, after the train stopped.

Those (few?) who watch Robin Swicord's 2016 offering "Wakefield" will not be surprised at her earlier involvement with "Benjamin Button" - there's the same kind of tone in there somewhere. Here Swicord turns to a Nathaniel Hawthorne (and later EL Doctorow) short story to make what seems like a VEEEERRRRY long story. Basically, we're expected to sit around for 106 minutes and look at very similar, grubby and at times also offputting scenes, while star and absolute dominant of the film Brian Cranston - as Howard Wakefield - also sits around and makes comments on the life of the wife (played somewhat seductively by Jennifer Garner) and two daughters he has abruptly decided to leave ... without trace, for some months. He is able to do this, because he's in fact living hobo-like in a kind of outhouse building that overlooks their place, and he has a pair of good binoculars to watch the unfolding scene... He's rather sad to be apart from his family, but also sad about what life with that family had been like before. And he comes to the conclusion that, while maybe he was not the easiest or most dynamic of men, he was basically the hardworking funder of his family's activities, yet less and less recognised for his efforts as day followed day and month followed month.He rather quickly becomes convinced that the three are better off and happier without him, and was clearly on the point of becoming invisible at home even before he REALLY vanished... If the film has a point - and it's slightly debatable - it lies in the way we become so terribly blasé about relationships that do still have love in them in fact (as Howard realises once he is separated). Even when we are there, we are half-absent, regularly irritated, and not really trying hard enough. Of course, modern life with its rat race, trivialities, mountains of stressful nothingnesses and lack of time makes everything worthless get in the way of what really matters, so maybe it's not fully our fault. "Concentrating the mind wonderfully" by today's standards means husbands calling their wives from the supermarket on the way home to discuss the choice of yoghurt; and it's all so far from the elemental, tough-but-more-real days when a man went down the mine, or to battle, or off to sea, or into the field or the woods, and the dangers might be such that there was no absolute certainty he would ever be seen again. So Howard decides - abruptly enough - to emulate those days of yore by not being seen again. As time passes, he begins to realise what he's missing, but also reflects on all the many, many things he did not much like about his chosen woman, with whom he nevertheless sympathises, and for whom he feels growing love. How mixed up is that? Perhaps as mixed up as many a modern-day marriage.He wants her to need him, but she seems just to press on with life. He would like her to be heartbroken, but she isn't, so that ought to be his cue to get out of there. But he doesn't ... or can't.For much of the film thereafter, we in the audience feel palpable tension as to whether this is all going to end with something - or with nothing - resolved; with no closure at all. Given the cynical tone of much of the film we naturally fear the worst.And the ending is as it is...Some of us - maybe many of us - in married life do actually NEED the message that this film has to give us; but few if any are likely to make the effort to stick with and get it. But even if we watch just a few minutes, we could try and do better than Howard Wakefield, and seek not to make his mistakes. But will we actually do so? And CAN we actually do so, with the modern world dragging us down?Clearly this is not a worthless film, though the dry-as-dust Cranston has a hard job evoking much sympathy in us, and - in the end - maybe this tale was best left on the printed page, as opposed to on screen?