100 Streets (4 Stars)

In this film Gemma Arterton stars alongside Idris Elba, one of my favourite actors. They're the best known actors in the film, but there are others who are just as important to the stories. I said stories, not story. That wasn't an error. The film tells three unrelated stories in parallel. The characters meet each other, but their stories don't interlock.

When I last watched "100 Streets" I didn't understand it. The film's tag line, "Anyone can take a wrong turn", doesn't give a clue. It connects all three stories. All three stories are the results of bad things that a person did in the past, but it still doesn't explain what the director wants to say. The three families that we see are on different levels of society, but they all live within a one square mile area in London. Max and Emily are a wealthy upper middle class couple; George and Kathy are a lower middle class couple; Kingsley (who lives with his mother) is working class or lower. Is there an official category for people who don't work and live from crime?

Now it's clicked. I get it. The film is about existential nihilism. Life has no purpose. As Kingsley puts it, "Shit happens". The amateur actor Terence expresses it more eloquently. He points at a gravestone and says that a person's life is only the dash on a gravestone between the two years.

That might sound depressing, but has existentialism ever been uplifting?

There's another theme that's shown in the interactions of the people. When we meet a person, whether it's once or regularly, we only see a small portion of his life. It's not about keeping secrets. Any person has compartments in his life. Think of your own life:

* You have a family with a wife and children.

* You have a place of work.

* You have hobbies.

Your wife doesn't see you at your place of work. She might or might not see you at a club, for instance a table tennis club.

Your work colleagues have a very limited overview of your life.

You might have more than one hobby, for instance playing table tennis and listening to rock music. Your friends from one club might be surprised if they bump into you at the other club. "So you do this as well?"

But the main point of the film is to show the randomness of life. George and Kathy have been trying in vain to have a baby for almost 20 years. Emily leaves her husband, and then finds out that her husband has made her pregnant. One man dies, while another man who wants to die is persuaded that living is better. It's all random. Nobody can make plans, because he doesn't know what will happen next. You can be crossing the road when you're hit by a taxi cab. One person's life ends, while the life of another person (the taxi driver) changes completely.

The film was an unprecedented flop. It has the lowest success rate of any film I've reviewed. But I like it, and I can recommend it to my readers.

Success Rate:  - 10628.2

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