Very subjective, spoilerFULL review of 'I Origins' movie & digital painting

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Ian is molecular biologist and he is obsessed with the eye because it is seen by some as the first line of debate on evolution as a whole, and in particular the alternative choice of ‘intelligent design’. Put simply, many argue that the eye is too complex an organ to appear by pure chance or biological ‘luck’. So Ian, postgraduate student, is already pursuing his life's work, researching a form of blind worm that could evolve to have a sense of sight.

It's - of course - an ambitious goal, but it's not the main plot of the film. It belongs to a pair of irises that he photographs by pure chance one evening at a party. He instantly falls in love head over heels into pair of incredible eyes – Sofi’s eyes. Sofi is a free spirit who slips through Ian's fingers after a brief and intense love affair like a mist. Sofi’s eyes is the inspiration for Ian's seven-year journey that may lead to verifiable proof of metempsychosis.

Metempsychosis the passing of the soul at death into another body either human or animal. Very much alike in the case of theory of Reincarnation - means divine human souls is born again on earth in another human body.
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The films narration is split into several different threads. Michael Pitt's(Ian) performance unites them all, and let us follow somewhat convoluted story. Pitt's presence became and anchor, even when he overpowers his character in the opening scenes and swamp the audience with strong sense of self and quite surprising authority.

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Maybe that is very reason that best scenes he shares with Sofi(Astrid Berges-Frisbey ). Their strange relationship of two extremely different people, takes the form of a debate between two opposing sides of the mind. The director(Mike Cahill) runs the camera with great care. He wants us to be infatuated with Sofi as much as Ian is. Berges-Frisbey, like her character in the film, has a rare mutation called sector heterochromia, which makes her irises several colours at once (brown, green, blue, grey and gold). A close-up of these beautiful irises was used in the poster for the film.
The almost fiery interior of the iris surrounding the abyssal blackness of the pupil.

Add to this the childlike awe of Berges-Frisbey that remains present in every scene long after she has disappeared from the frame, and the audience is led to honestly believe Sofi's first line of dialogue in the film, when Ian asks her where she comes from: ‘From another planet’.

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Unfortunately, the third aspect of the love triangle, leaves us not only unsatisfied, but with a feeling of great discomfort. Karen(Brit Marling) - a dauntingly human and very logical character introduces a strong yet necessary simplification to a film that seems entangled in its own plot.

Karen, instead of being a submissive and boring assistant pulls Ian out of his academic stupor and gives him a new energy. In these labs, I Origins relies on real science to justify its ultimate pseudo-euphoria. Using real iris recognition systems first developed at Cambridge(Google) and some airports now use a 12-digit code identification system to track employees and travellers - The films assumes that everyone in history can be tracked in this life (or the next). I Origins even uses India as a background for the third act - the government there has begun to use iris recognition on their citizens.

And yet, the movie doesn’t fully explore all these threads until near the end of the film. It feels a bit disjointed since it advances in nearly orchestral movements instead of a singular progression. For some that might be mystifying I guess, but that might be the point as Ian’s journey becomes its own larger mystery behind the biggest one of all. It’s not about chases or finding bodies, but solving a question that many intellectuals like Ian have stumbled upon for a centuries before.

The film absorbed me completely and after a while it spit me out. It is as beautiful as it is annoying and this is why I recommend it to everyone. It is not bland, it is not artificially fleshed out and smoothed over. For me, it's about the search for meaning. And after all, isn't that what we're all after?

Shout out to @holoz0r - thank you very much for movie recommendation and for inspiration! Cheers!

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