Against the rules. A white hedonistic stalker and a black encyclopedic family man meet in a hospital room. They lived different lives, they have different roots, different financial and marital status, different ideals.
1. Against the rules. A white hedonistic stalker and a black encyclopedic family man meet in a hospital room. They lived different lives, they have different roots, different financial and marital status, different ideals. But there is much in common: both are cancer patients and doomed. Both have little time left. But enough strength to finally feel what you did not feel in a past life. And they act against the rules of dying: they begin to live.
2. New morality. In my opinion, this film is the first sign of some new morality of our rapidly changing, including aging, civilization. More and more old people, less and less young people. The experience of the old in a world where information reigns supreme seems to be useless: it is the experience of the past and cannot be claimed. And therefore there is no a priori respect for old age. The family is disintegrating as a category, because now you need to study right up to 30 years old – whether there are family ties … A person remains alone and … learns to find happiness in solitude. “Until I Played…” is a film about the happiness of a lonely person in a world of lonely people.
3. Freedom and life, death and joy. Reiner’s film boldly operates with precisely these, quite philosophical, categories and is not afraid that they will come into conflict with the leisure-consumer nature of today’s cinema. The pathos of his film, the goals and essence of his characters bravely confront the soothing smoothness of a typical Hollywood product: before their personal freedom, before their purely individual joy of life, family values, social obligations, all this hypocrisy of today’s society recede. As a result, the concept of eternal rest prepared for the heroes loses its hopelessness and acquires a happy carelessness. After all, it becomes clear from the film: the fullness of life is perhaps more valuable than physical life, and the freedom to belong to oneself can compensate for the bitterness of death.
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman.