360

Director: Fernando Meirelles

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Ben Foster

Genre: Drama/Romance 2011

Running time: 110 mins.

Rating: ★★★½ 

A businessman tempted to be unfaithful to his wife, sets into motion a series of events that ripple around the globe, Vienna to Paris, London, Bratislava, Rio, Denver, and Phoenix, with dramatic consequences. A witnessing of an array of people of different social backgrounds and their relationships with one another. With that a reminder, "Everything comes full circle." 

How far will one go to, naively and degradingly, to get what one wants in life? There are always consequences. Does it always bring the happiness that one had hoped for? Or a feeling of entrappment and suffocation? All these questions bombarding and swirling around the mind as each of the characters are introduced with their stories that somehow weave into one narrative. The blue undertone is unclear as to how it aids in illustrating the story at first. Is the need for love, to connect, and for success the underlining themes of the film? Is having so much idealic hope for events to turn out great for once and then doesn't, a reason to stop trying? Then it goes back to the point of everything coming to a full circle. 

The characters are very relatable. The audience is surrounded, like a storm cloud, by the hopeless depression each one is entrapped by, going about their daily business because it's the only illusionary solution to get by. In the last decade or so, the idea of having a glimpse into the lives of complete strangers that are unconsciously connected. Though, it's a stretch and it's a film, it reminds the viewer that we are not as alone as we think and we are not all that different from one another. We all have problems. One interaction can sometimes change the course of one's life. However, taking risks can sometimes be necessary to go to the next phase in one's life and not always in a negative way.

It's refreshing to have a film that's not afraid to use subtitles interchangably, like its confident that the audience is able to figure things out on their own and literate. By the end of the film, the depressive, emprisoned, and suffocating blue undertones turn into a strange, but freeing warm undertones.