Review of Anesthesia (2016) by Janice C — 03 Feb 2017

Life is a road full of stumbling, of blows and obstacles, it is imperfect; we try our best to find our own identity, as well as love and connection with the ones we have around us. That is the main message that "Anesthesia" brings with it. Is it something new and meaningful? Not really.

The film provides 7 cases (in a narrow sense they could be more or less) of people whose seemingly isolated experiences are initially closely interconnected with each other and as the film progresses these relationships are strengthened. All the staged events are a reflection of the problems that today's societies in the West face and which are the consequence of an era that has been invaded by drugs, poverty, crime, disease, family disintegration and drug abuse. However, this film falls flatly into descriptions and never mentions anything beyond a deep and absurd fatalistic idea of unsubstantiated depression by using meaningless arguments, with an infinity of pointless acts.

Cynically and melancholy, Tim Blake Nelson, through one of the characters, Walter Zarrow, (Sam Waterston) who is a professor of philosophy at Columbia University manifests through mind-boggling reflections the meaning of life that have being replacing human values by the new characteristics that the technological era brings. This is well established, and his last speech is indeed quite encouraging and even quite salvageable, but in itself the screenplay of the film is too pretentious from the moment in which it seems that the teacher is the only happy character, and whose exemplary and satisfied life is attributed by a series of good actions he has done on his personal and professional lifestyle, leaving the rest of the characters positioned in a very boring, dull and insignificant status. The sad thing about all of this is that the actors are very good and although their dialogues and script are completely banal, the sincerity with which they develop, as well as the communication, are elements that managed to save some bad scenes.

I insist, the film is very descriptive, narrates events, whose origins are sometimes unknown and whose conclusions do not point to anything in particular. For instance, the girl, who is the daughter of the woman who apparently has a tumor in the ovary, is a so empty character with a so unfounded sustenance, and the husband who leaves his wife to see his lover... I saw nothing in that story that was worth it, simply because of the fact that nothing really happened.

In short, this failed attempt at the miserable current society in the United States, in which all you have to think is that hope and love will solve everything, falling into a vicious circle in which nothing is discussed and nothing is really evaluated but just suddenly happens, makes clear to us that Tim Blake Nelson wants to be optimistic with the whole world before a severe problem, but it does not contribute something worthwhile. The stories are under a scheme of interconnectivity, that's are perfect, but it fails precisely in trying to connect with each other because in essence the facts are completely irrelevant and this is nothing more than a gesture that there are films that are created to go nowhere, being the existentialism a resource that has been employed in a very disoriented and scarcely articulated way.