Anesthesia (2016)

Touches You

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Multiple lives intersect in the aftermath of the violent mugging of a Columbia University philosophy professor. Tim Blake Nelson's directional debut doesn't disappoint as you might think although some characters needed to be explored more for example Kristen Stewart's character Sophie was very interesting with a dark path never explored but there's also characters that get a lot of screen time that they were kinda uninteresting for example Corey Stoll and Gretchen Mol a man who is cheating on his wife and the other one is just having drinking problems. There were much more interesting things in this film for example we have a man who is addicted on drugs also why not explore Walter's backstory with his wife and his son? Great movie and very good characters but they needed to explore more about it instead of showing us the same things we've seen before.

While flawed, Anesthesia is better than 90% of what comes out of Hollywood. Tim Blake Nelson explores the mystery of what life is all about. There are some brilliant performances by K. Todd Freeman and Gretchen Mol. While I like Kristen Stewart (unlike most people), her part is very small although powerful and sad.I did not love the ending but the movie is still well worth watching.This is not a feel good, happy movie but It felt real and raw and very much what life is like. Instead of wasting two hours on a formulaic, predictable movie, try this and contemplate how beautiful, terrible, messy, and wonderful life is.

I found this film to be disappointingly predictable and a self- indulgent piece of "entertainment".It would have been more entertaining to watch paint drying - and about as easy to guess the next scene. The characters were all two-dimensional and lacking in any depth. One detail that particularly irritated me was the lecturing manner - and content - of the supposed Columbia University philosophy professor. He addressed his class in a manner that no real lecturer would, speaking in over-written prose found only in bad novels - and poorer made-for-TV films. The subjects matter he seemed to cover was so eclectic and with such a tenuous connection to any school of philosophy that I wondered if the script writer was having a joke at the audience's - or academia's - expense.The concept of one incident linking various disparate individuals, and thus illustrating aspects of life - or in this case New York city - is so over-used that it will now only succeed with a better than average script. Unfortunately, despite the reasonably capable cast, this was a forlorn exercise.

This brilliant production manages to be intellectual and honest without being condescending or preachy.Particularly touching is the relationship between teacher and student. In their conversations, you find a paradox that I would imagine to be common among philosophers: you can delve into your work, searching for truth and meaning, but, by doing that, you can lose the social interaction that is key to finding those in our interconnected world. Humans are in a lose-lose situation, because they can't have both to the "necessary" degree. We can't "have it all". Ultimately, we can only pretend, and the only way to find total happiness is to accept (at worst) lies or (at best) suppositions. We are stuck in a semi-irrational state -- between nothingness and being God-like, as the young boy says to his sister.As another reviewer indicated, this film shares a subtle, and somewhat depressing, "life can't help but go on" message. You see this with the ending of the young boy juxtaposed with the troubles of his mother, but you also see it after the hospitalization of the drug addict. Rather than being focused on the troubles of his close friend, the lawyer was caught up in sex and his work.The film does not give much solace to those confused and looking for answers on life -- it really can't -- but it gives great insight into human suffering.