OK, did you think about what might be waiting outside your door this morning when you woke up? Did you decide against going down your usual route to work? Are you going to continue reading this review with a view to watching the film I am reviewing? (word of advice – please keep reading ha ha!!)
Well, we build our lives on choices and what is known as the laws of physics and evolution, but do we really pay attention when we are caught up in this ever-changing and ever-fascinating desire to compete for our place in the world.
Writer/director Costas Aenian attempts to answer some of these questions on our behalf in his new documentary DIMITRIS, NIKOS …AND THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE, which attempts to analyse the principles of fate, luck and cosmic physics against the backdrop of the Greek Civil War – and the tale of one individual who was abandoned as a baby in woods by his parents, prompting people to question and wonder whether it was choice or blind fate that led the parents to make that decision of abandonment and set the baby on his own diverging path in life.
We seldom see this explored in the context of more human individuals, instead relying on science-themed documentaries and movies that take us to incredible places in the heavens (2001, INTERSTELLAR) and this is the refreshing subversion and history lesson that Aenian utilises with dividends when exploring this concept of the evolution of life. The film opens with a ‘what if?’ about the dinosaurs and whether a comet’s fate that led to the extinction of them was guided by the planetary gravitational forces of the Solar System.
In turn, the documentary opens up all manner of possibilities on where our stance is on luck and destiny and we can look to all manner of historical moments to question whether these were meant to happen or not (there is one rumoured story that John Lennon was actually not meant to be in New York when he was shot and was actually preparing to reconnect with Paul McCartney to reform the Beatles, so who knows…)
You can also look at the alternate histories of authors like Robert Harris (FATHERLAND is a take on what would have happened if Hitler had won World War II) that also play on the concept.
Whatever your view, DIMITRIS, NIKOS …AND THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE is an interesting and thought-provoking analysis of the concept of human luck.
