Do you really want to know? This is a question I asked in reviewing The Skin I Live In. The answer was “no,” beeteedubs. Sometimes it is better if you just do not know. This is another one of those cases. The mystery behind Doe is worth the telling, but the conclusion is not for everybody.
Eight years ago, some random guy was found on a park bench in El Lay. This John “Doe” (Timothy Davis) had no memory; it had been wiped clean. He also had no past, no one connected to him, and no one looking for him. That’s freaky, right? You wake up on a park bench and no one is looking for you? That’s a tragedy, that’s a societal failure, or at the very least there’s one person who should know damn well why he’s homeless and unconnected. John knows nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true. For some reason, he knows hundreds of different languages. Automatically. Fluently. Like a human Google translate.
Now there’s a better question. If you live in a city, you see homeless people all the time. You guess or invent their stories if you care; you overlook them if you don’t. But rarely do you guess that the person in question has superhuman talent. The question of “how does a language expert become homeless and unconnected?” is one of my favorites in recent cinema.
And, of course, talented people don’t stay unconnected for long. Eight years later, John has a wife, daughter, life, PhD, professorship at UCLA, book deal, and I hear he bats clean up for the Dodgers in his spare time; Lord knows the MLB can always use more translators.
So you have this guy who has memories that only go back eight years. He doesn’t dream. And he can speak every language on the planet including several dead ones. He must be fun at parties, right? Meh, scratch that. C3PO is the cock-blocker of the Star Wars universe. Anyway, John is minding his own business when he is confronted in his classroom by “the math guy.”
The math guy is as advanced at math as John is at language. Now, unfortunately, the film didn’t do a great job at demonstrating this … Math guy’s scribbles look like somebody was doodling during consecutive classes of Algebra II and Trig…but, to be fair, it’s gotta be really difficult to demonstrate
true mathematical genius on film. I mean, no filmmaker is actually better at math than the best mathematician (and vice-versa), so how could they possibly comprehend and display? Often, it comes out as “write this really complicated proof on a chalkboard and then give a speech condescending to all the dopes in the room.” Doe didn’t bother with that formality. Point is, math guy also doesn’t have a memory or connections beyond eight years ago … but he’s really good a math.
And then math guy commits suicide. And then other people show up. And now, I’ll stop talking about the plot.
Doe was a pretty good mystery. And you’re gonna say, “that’s messed up” more than once. Many mysteries are mysteries for damn good reasons. This is certainly not a film I’d normally recommend; the hero has extremely limited general appeal and, understandably, spends most of the film wearing a “what’s going on?” expression. Also, the material is a tad esoteric and a subplot takes a WTF racist turn. You might give a Homer Simpson “D’OH!” upon choosing this one. But it held my attention throughout, which is much more than most films do these days and for that, I’m a fan. But just in case, ask me again in eight years.
John Doe simply woke up one day
Knowing only a linguistic cache
He’s got all kinds of speech
But I’m ignoring that teach
Cuz never once did I hear Igpay Atinlay
Rated TV-MA, 98 Minutes
Director: Justin Foia
Writer: Justin Foia, Timothy Foia (Were you guys named after liberal legislation?)
Genre: Do you really want to know?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People with a firm belief in the power of change
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The rest of us
