Instructions for the exit from depression Ben Singer was once one of the best children's musicians in the United States, but the record company stopped producing him, citing a lack of funds for advertising. After that, Ben began to have depression, which made him a pessimist to the bone, seeing in everything conspiracies and negativity. He divorced his wife and worked as a text corrector for 8 years, until one day he was fired for a single absenteeism, and committed for a good reason - saving a friend who fell into a diabetic coma. And to top it all, the relationship with the daughter broke down. In general, the life of the main character went to hell, but everything changed when his friend’s sister arrived from Senegal.
“The Amazing World” is the first and so far the only production of Joshua Goldin, known for the scripts for the films “Man of Darkness” by Sam Raimi, “In Danger” by Francis Weber and the mini-series “Clondike”, which indicates his diversity. Goldin’s debut work turned out to be light, measured, a little sad and without serious shortcomings, except that the installation is sometimes sharp, which creates a feeling of incompleteness of the scene. However, the film is not fascinating, rather curious and moderately interesting.
The new director decided not to use any special cinematic means that manipulate the audience’s perception, but simply made a deviation into existential melodrama and showed all the restlessness of the main character, who is on the verge of complete devastation and moral death. Only playing the guitar, smoking joints, causing a hallucination in the form of a male consultant who understands human psychology and a slight rebelliousness, expressed in the wrong parking of the car, allow him to stay afloat, but it is difficult to call it life, rather existence. Therefore, the Senegalese Hadi became for Ben a kind of exotic mirage from another world, a source of life-giving power, filling his soul with energy, due to which Ben begins to gradually bloom like a flower after the rain.
In addition, the film touches on the problems of humanity, morality and helping others, which have become very relevant in the modern world, which is based on consumption and the desire to earn more. The director showed them through the prism of trifles, which seem not very noticeable individually, but in the compartment make up a picture of being. Human life has devalued and ceased to matter. Firms are obsessed with revenue, which means they don’t benefit from having their employees skip the day just because they needed to save someone. Moreover, employees are consumables for them, a faceless mass and this is most vividly demonstrated in the scene where Ben, who decided to work as a pizza deliverer after his dismissal, brings an order to the former employer, and he does not even recognize him. Against the background of such relationships, the main character, despite all his problems, appears in the role of a real person, of which there are not so many now, and his “singing” surname becomes very symbolic in the context of film history, because this crazy, noisy world is extremely lacking kind and calm songs by Ben Singer.
The mirage will soon dissipate, leaving behind a harsh reality, but Ben has already recharged his vitality and is ready for it. He's back...