My Adventure with Mister Lonely

“For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.” – Jean Paul Sartre

Mister Lonely

This is a rather insanely absurd movie and I can’t see my way to recommending it to anyone but … if you want to see what French Existentialism looks like in caricature, I think this would serve your purpose. There are two story lines here. One concerns a group of people who feel so insignificant about themselves and their human value, they are only happy when they pretend to be celebrities (Michael Jackson, Marilynn Monroe, Abe Lincoln, Charlie Chaplin, etc.). The other story line is about a group of nuns who jump out of planes without parachutes to prove their faith. Got your interest yet? It all has to do, I think, with Sartre’s dictum “It is only in our decisions that we are important.”

The main character, a Michael Jackson impersonator, is seeing a French therapist who encourages him to believe that he is Michael Jackson and sets him up with opportunities to do so. Indeed, he even funds him in his role playing. I think the point is the existentialist notion that we really are whatever we make of ourselves and if we can pretend to be someone significant then by all means we ought to because there is no point in pretending to be someone insignificant (though in reality, according to the existentialists, we all are). “Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal," Sartre insists, “. . . One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.”

In Mister Lonely, the impersonators are all mostly happy people until they begin to care that others think them worthy of the sort of attention that their assumed celebrity identities get. They can’t survive the consciousness that they are not who they pretend to be. That devastates them. “I confused things with their names: that is belief” Sartre would say, warning us not to imagine that labeling someone, even ourselves, makes us that label. We can literally wake up and decide NOT to be Michael Jackson any day we so chose. We can wake up and decide not to be what we have been telling ourselves we were. “There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”

So, if you want to get a look at the insanity that can result from pursuing a philosophy a little too far, by all means, jump out of this plane and hope for a miracle. Rent this seemingly senseless movie. Pretend that it is your all time favorite. I dare you. Grin.

Question for Comment: Have you ever changed your mind about who you were? How radical a change are you capable of?