Mateo Gil
Proyecto Lazaro

'Proyecto Lazaro' is a film so difficult and painful to describe that, frankly, I wouldn't even know where to begin.

As many times before, as many times before that I write and perhaps even more specifically than other times, I think that perhaps the starting point might be my life experiences and personal perceptions.

Of course, I will try not to be egocentric and to focus the contents of the review on myself, but to be, in some way, a kind of 'instrument' to narrate the story and contents of this film by Spanish director Mateo Gil (born 1974) and released last year, 2016.

After all, frankly, I never set out to tell something without expressing my point of view: I am not a chronicler, and deep down, even those who write the 'chronicle' of something, somehow, even unconsciously, express their point of view. Their personal judgment on some issue.

I have always been obsessed with the 'end.'

Let me explain: this doesn't specifically mean that I want to die.

Probably, to tell the truth, I am not that attached to life. To be honest, if I could have decided freely, perhaps I would have chosen never to be born, and if I could choose to die without any pain and without contraindications, and here I refer to the implications of the suffering of my family (by the way, I hope my mother will never read these lines), I would do it.

I would accept this condition without any particular compulsion, perhaps with some regrets for what I wanted to do but couldn't and can't do, but after all this 'tiredness,' I would sign this kind of pact with the devil.

I have a particularly fragile balance, and to defend myself, I have regulated my existence according to obsessive-compulsive schemes that are like a kind of high-precision 'Swiss clock,' and when they are not followed in a specific, practically 'perfect' way, I find myself stopped from walking the famous razor's edge and falling to one side or the other.

I have tried to kill myself.

It has happened more than once.

Each time there were no specific reasons at the base: I have always been somehow dissatisfied.

This does not concern the people around me; it does not concern specific purposes and goals: it is as if I am searching for all the answers. But no one can have an answer to all things, and certain things cannot be explained because they have no explanation.

This reduction of all things to a forced 'rationalization' obviously follows that systematization I have already mentioned. One can perceive in this a sort of insecurity, which I certainly do not deny, and that, together with all the other things, involves not so much a rejection of life as a real objective difficulty.

I do not know how to live.

I do not know how to enjoy the many beauties of life (and certainly there are) and not even when these few and difficult times offer themselves to me in some way and can be reached.

In these cases, I still commit some act that eventually leads me to sabotage everything and return to the starting position.

Or worse: to hit rock bottom.

And - mind you - if you continuously seek to hit rock bottom, it lowers more and more. You dig, dig, dig, and at a certain point, you find yourself upside down on the other side of the world. Which I believe, in my specific case, corresponds to some unspecified point in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

At this point, I frankly do not think I am more afraid of dying: I am certainly more afraid of living my life, and also for this reason, I am probably very often (almost always) alone. Because this way, I lower every possible 'intensity,' and my impulses are reduced to a level that, in this manner, I can generally control.

I think this long introduction, although apparently unrelated to the contents of the film, is instead very important to try to understand what I will write below in narrating its story and contents, and in particular to describe certain aspects of the character as I have seen and perceived them.

'Proyecto Lazaro' or 'Realive' is a joint production between Belgium, France, Spain and a science fiction film with the main subject being a young man, a young advertiser named Marc Jarvis (Tom Hughes) who is about my age (I am thirty-three) and discovers he is terminally ill with cancer.

Practically he has only a year left at most to live before the situation deteriorates completely and his body begins to degenerate to certain and inevitable death, despite any cure.

The boy acknowledges the situation and systematically narrates everything one must do before being able to leave this world: how to manage relationships with family members, friends, work...

Meanwhile, however, something special or at least unprecedented happens regarding the rest of his existence: for the first time in his life, he truly begins to live, and more specifically, but this detail is used in a specific manner to represent what the director intends (who is also the author of the screenplay), he finally establishes a stable relationship with Naomi (Oona Chaplin, the daughter of Geraldine), the girl he has always loved and who decides to stay by his side until the end of his days.

Things in his relationship with Naomi, however, change the day when, having gathered information on an experimental project in the medical field that involves the cryogenization of people who are practically on the brink of death to bring them back to life in an unspecified future where the necessary technologies to do so will exist, Marc officially announces to his friends his desire to anticipate his death (to better preserve his body once the cryopreservation process is initiated) and have the possibility in the future to return to life and live the rest of his existence.

The news is received favorably by his friends, but in a harsh manner by Naomi, who feels in some way 'betrayed,' and who feels the special bond that has finally been built between them and Marc is especially betrayed: as if this gesture creates an insurmountable barrier (not just temporal) between them.

Nevertheless, after an initial phase of abandonment, she decides to remain by his side until the last moment when Marc will ingest poison and commit suicide before undergoing the freezing process.

The year 2084: Marc becomes (after a series of spectacular and painful failures) the first subject to be 'resurrected' according to the procedures established by the medical staff of the 'Lazarus Project.'

His body is literally 'thawed' and subsequently reconstructed using modern technologies.

Thus begins a rehabilitation process whose final goal is not only to give Marc life back but the ultimate and definitive one to give him a new existence: his 'rebirth' must be understood as something completely new and having nothing to do with his past existence.

Yet, since his awakening and despite a certain attraction and significant relationship that he establishes with his 'personal nurse,' Doctor Elizabeth (Charlotte Le Bon), Marc is somehow always immersed in the memories of his past: a process further stimulated by sensory perceptions altered by the use of a modern technological tool, a headset called 'Mind Control' which literally retrieves all possible images from a subject's memory to store them in a kind of telematic archive that can be shared like a kind of 'social.'

When Marc learns that Naomi also subjected herself, years after his death, to the cryogenic process, it becomes evident that his 'return to life' process is somehow compromised, and within Marc (in a continuous alternation within the film between scenes relating to the present year 2084 and his past life) questions and doubts increase.

Until he reaches what we can consider his final considerations.

The best moment of his existence was indeed those last months of his life in which he had planned and decided the date of his death: it was only then that he felt somehow in control of his life, knowing what he had to do, and all he really wanted in the end was indeed to die.

Deep down, he never truly wanted to be reborn: he only wanted to decide when and how to die.

Without continuing to narrate the plot and every aspect of the film, which in my opinion hides and highlights particularities in every single scene that can inspire more or less important reflections, it is evident that the film addresses different topics that are fundamental and central even in the daily debate of our society.

Starting mainly from what we can define as 'the pain of living,' which constitutes one of humanity's great historical taboos and is always so difficult and 'shameful' to talk about.

Secondly, the collective theme of euthanasia: something that has been part of the social, cultural, and political debate more and more strongly for at least ten-fifteen years. I go back in time to the events, those that were the most discussed that I remember, of Piergiorgio Welby, who died on December 20, 2006, in Rome according to his will, when he was sedated and his respirator was disconnected after a long hospitalization lasting about ten years.

On that occasion, Dr. Mario Riccio, anesthetist, confirmed during a press conference held the following day that he helped him die.

Subjected to the judgment of the Medical Association, Dr. Riccio was later recognized as having acted in the full legitimacy of ethical and professional conduct, but in fact, the issue of euthanasia remains an unresolved topic in Italy.

But it is a theme that evidently still needs to be debated today: urgent daily news events demand it.

Regarding what the methods and regulations may be, we also face dilemmas of an ethical and/or moral (in some cases: religious) nature. In Belgium, in some cases, the right to euthanasia has also been recognized for individuals suffering from depression. I am not familiar with the details, and I will not stand here scrutinizing what is right or wrong.

Also because, in my opinion, there isn't such a clear boundary between what is right and what is wrong, and this is one of those things to which it is not possible to give an exact meaning, just as it is not possible to give an exact meaning to life and death.

Throughout the passage of time forward into the future, the film embarks on a process of searching for these meanings, but at the same time, it does not take sides nor does it propose to give clear answers, in the awareness that absolute truths do not exist and that they could never be exhausted within the time and contents of a cinematographic production.

In the end, what are we talking about when we talking about 'Proyecto Lazaro'?

The film is not a hymn to life, nor is it an invitation to suicide.

It is the story of a person who discovers that he is unwell only when he is - according to what is a declared medical diagnosis - 'REALLY' unwell and who, caught between a life he would like to live or have lived and the inability to continue living it and the past lost opportunities, fails to find himself and then chooses not to choose: an easy way out that in today's reality is not given to us due to missing developments in the field of medical science (which also constitutes another theme to discuss in the kind, referring to failed and painfully and traumatically unsuccessful experiments for patients who couldn't return to life: an ethical theme that - why not - revives the same discussion topics that were debated during the last century thinking of the treatment methods, for example, in psychiatric clinics, what they once called madhouses...).

The film narrates a desire to live which, however, is potentially unexpressed: as if one wanted to do something but couldn't quite understand how to do it.

After all, you cannot fly a plane without the instructions.

You cannot drive a car if you do not know how to start it.

You cannot even walk on your legs until you are just a baby and cannot yet stand up.

'Proyecto Lazaro' is a film that can hurt like a punch in the stomach, yet at the same time, it might be the best science fiction film I can suggest you watch right now.

Watch it alone, but even better with someone who cares about you: hold this person, hug them. Keep them close. Remember Dan Aykroyd in 'The Blues Brothers'? 'Everybody Needs Somebody'. Probably the great lesson you can derive from watching this film is precisely this because the rest are considerations destined to remain unresolved, constituting arguments related to the great mystery of life and death, and deep down, love too is a great mystery, but perhaps it does not impose such radical and clear-cut choices as those of crossing that chasm that divides one existence from its end.