As with his Oscar winner Crash, Paul Haggis wrote and directed this film using the same structure of three scripts, three people, and three locations interwoven. Once again, the movie delivered its message with class and the cast was appropriate for each one of the characters.
As I read some of the reviews I concluded that most people couldn’t decipher the connection between the stories presented and missed the bull´s eye that gets revealed at the very end of the movie. There is a song entitled “The Windmills Of Your Mind” that describes it without spoiling it for those who have not seen it yet:
“Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s turning running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!”
When compared to the rawness of Crash, this movie is more on the intellectual, intricate, and complex side. The performances are all not just exquisite but purposely aloof until the very end, when it all finally makes cohesive sense. It is up to us to connect the dots.