One of my favourite movies and how different moods changes your perception of it

Adrian George Nicolae
3 min readJul 13, 2018

I’ve seen the above movie 4 times now, with the last time being last night.

Watching such a recent movie 4 times is an overkill for sure, however, I watched it in different phases of my life, which were 2 times in different stages of depression, one time when I felt sort of okay, yet I was still in some sort of limbo, and now, when I probably feel the best I’ve felt in years, like I how I used to feel before I moved in this country.

The movie is about Davis Mitchell (Gyllenhaal) who goes through a tragedy and realizes he’s emotionally void. Upon hearing some words from Phil (Cooper) he starts to be more observant and to figure out how to be himself. With that, he gets random help from Karen Moreno (Watts) and her son. Will Davis finally emote after years of repressed feelings?

Now, here’s why I can find myself in this character.
He’s also going through some depression/breakdown, but he’s acting differently than I did. He’s in a different environment and has at least one person pestering him with something. I had none, and that’s also to do with surroundings, people.

He was working in finance, with big numbers, and despite that, he became numb to everything else that was fun. He had a lovely and fun wife that tried to bring him out of his shell at times and he wasn’t really interested.
While I’ll never have a job, and a wife, like that, I’ve been around people that tried to take me out of my shell, and sometimes it worked, sometimes I was too afraid. And then you see how other people are having great times being chill and you’re seeing them as glitches (like how he saw Karen’s son).

His new habit involves him using something he’s never used to get some kicks or an adrenaline rush, which looks like some sort of OCD. I’ve noticed some sort of OCD in myself in recent years, and while I haven’t done construction work (but I’d really enjoy tearing down a house), I’ve gotten my kicks by doing a variety of things on and off stage, and some travelling, too.

He’s starting to have random encounters with people, either talking about his life to some random woman to demolishing walls for people who think he’s crazy.
You see, in life, if you allow yourself some fun, some out of your comfort zone thing, you get to experience all sorts of things, and all you have to do is tap someone on the shoulder and ask. Who knows where that goes. It used to work years ago, before technology went up a few levels.
I sometimes wonder if our parents would’ve met or been as together as they are now if they would’ve had access to as much social media as we do.

All in all, it’s a movie about self-discovery following an incident that emotionally manifested itself in you (regardless if you’re repressed or not) and how you changed after that.

Oh, and the soundtrack is kick-ass.

First published on my blog.