Three things come to mind while viewing Carl Hunter’s Sometimes, Always, Never.
- Bill Nighy is great in everything
- This feels like Moby Dick
- Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein quote “The limits of my language mean limits of my world”.
- Bill Nighy is great. He plays Alan, a scrabble obsessed man who is searching for his missing son. Alan recruits his other son, Peter (Sam Riley), to help search for the Prodigal Son. Both men struggle with the stress this task exerts on them. This pressure manifests itself in how they treat those around them as they both try to keep their family structures functioning.
If you like Bill Nighy, then stop reading and just go watch this. He’s worth the price of admission.
If you do want to read the review then carry on.
Alan is a master Scrabble player and has taught his sons the joys of interesting and esoteric words. The film flutters with the surreal both in the dialogue but also in the cinematography. There were moments where I thought the director was trying to imitate Wes Anderson with stop motion animation and the quirky framing elements.
Nighy hams it up most of the time but you can feel the pain of his missing son and how it weighs heavily on him. His search feels like a Sisyphean task where all the leads take him to dead ends and you can see the impact of these decisions over the film.
This film’s central question is will Alan find his son? The real issue is will he realise that his quest for the missing son is ruining the minuscule relationship he still has with the other son Peter. This film looks at how people deal with grief and loss. It looks at the obvious grief of the death of a loved wonder, but also the slower, potentially more painful, grief of a relationship dying right in front of you.
Both men struggle with their relationship with each other and this expresses itself in how they deal with others. Alan is manipulative bordering on abusive. Peter retreats and is distant with his wife and son.
The pursuit of the missing son causes Alan to drive a bigger and bigger wedge between himself and Peter. It would appear that the costs of losing Peter to find the missing son is worth it. The trouble is that despite Alan’s misguided decisions, he is still charming and affable and so you hope that he finds the missing son.
That is until, like Captain Ahab, his monomaniacal mission starts to turn Alan into the antagonist of the story and Peter becomes infinitely more sympathetic.
Sometimes, Always, Never is a challenging watch, both in the subject matter, the pacing, and the vocabulary. It is elevated by great performances who draw you in. I don’t think this movie provides much in the way of a cathartic resolution, but it does make you think, and it does make you feel, and that’s what art is meant to do.
By Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe
8th May 2019