Films don’t usually make me cry, especially those from the science fiction genre, but this film got to me. It may have been the story line about dementia. My father died from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. My spouse died from complications of a stroke. I think most people who experienced the loss of someone close will be touched by the events in the movie. Death from a neuroscience disease is not required. It is not clear what events in the movie mean until the end, and even then, you are not sure, so much is left up to the viewer and I think that is a good thing.
The film deals with the themes of deferred dreams, mid-life crisis, adolescent angst, illness, space, and time travel. The audience has a lot to chew on. This film requires patience and the suspension of your rational world view. A friend pointed out similarities between Linoleum and Donnie Darko. They are very different films. Both movies explore the flexibility of time, but to me, in Donnie Darko, the subject matter was opaquer and more difficult to get at. The ending of Linoleum helps the viewer pull the different event-strings together into some kind of cohesive ball. Not quite a perfect sphere, but more comprehensive than the ending of Donnie Darko, at least for me.
Jim Gaffigan, who I am familiar with as a comedian, is perfect in the lead role. His character is smart, but clueless. He is observant and self-effacing like his comedy. His character knows what he feels. He knows love. He loves his wife. He loves his children, and he loves science. His character loves the wonder of scientific discovery through space travel. It helps to enrich his life in a way that the mendacity of living can sometimes cause us to forget. Life is meant to be an adventure and can't be contained or quantified. As much as we strive to be, we really are not in control. At some point in our lives, usually near death, we awaken to this truth. We realize that we have been passengers all along, not drivers.
We can see this through the experiences of the Gaffigan character, Cameron, as he recalls his life with the help of his faithful wife. There is a temptation to say that the life he recalls is made up, but all of life is made up anyway. You remember what you remember the way you want to remember it. The truth is not a solid block, but an amorphous blob which we get to shape with our perceptions, just like the Cameron character describes seeing space at the beginning of the movie, how it seems to take shape with the perception of the beholder. Our lives seem to take shape through the perception of the beholder.
No. I am not sure why the film is called Linoleum. It could be referencing the properties of the material. It is durable and easy to clean flooring surface. A sound foundation, solid, lasting. It was considered revolutionary—futuristic at the time of its Introduction, about 160 years ago. It was and still is, a product of naturally occurring materials. It is not synthetic.