User Reviews

This is a thought provoking movie, tackling themes like fate, the idea of soulmates/being tied in some way to another individual, the possibility of an afterlife, the never-ending debate of science vs. Faith/religion and all through scientific eyes. It's a passionate love story with an unexpected sci-fi twist to it. As a viewer, you initially get drawn in the film by the passionately mysterious love connection between two polar-opposite individuals: a scientific researcher with an obsession surrounding the eyes and a charming unconventional bohemian girl. The idea of fate comes back often throughout the movie, following feelings, intuition and not necessarily scientific facts. That's why it was intriguing when Ian, the scientist infatuated with the idea of proof and of certainty, followed his intuition and blindly pursue the number 11, which lead him to find Sofi, the women with the eyes. The question sparks: what if there's more to the universe than what we can perceive with our senses?

Anyways, my favorite part is the end... of course. The slowness of the scene when Ian meets the little girl for the first time was absolutely perfect. The timing, the acting, the camera position... I would not change a single thing. The test threw me through a loop. My emotions were all over the place, from excitement to disappointment, but ending on a note of "feeling foolish". They had me hoping for a certain outcome, but I'm so glad they didn't give it to me because this created an ending up for interpretation which just makes the whole movie so much better. The little girl fails the test, 44%... The facts disprove Ians theory, but in the very last scene, the girl is terrified of the elevator... coincidence? Evidence? Who knows. But you can see in Ians eyes, he finally believes in something else than just the facts.

Ian Gray (Michael Pitt) is a PHD student in New York. At a Halloween party, he meets a mysterious girl. He takes a picture of her eye as he often does. She leaves before getting her name. With only a picture of her eye, he finds her from a billboard leading him to spiritual model Sofi (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey). He's researching a way to make color-blind mice see color. Karen (Brit Marling) is his new first-year student assistant. They start a project to create eyes on an animal without eyes showing the evolution of the eye and to debunk Intelligent Design.

The premise is intriguing. The story starts well. It is ambitious in its subject matter. The film is solid up to the end of Sofi. Then it tries to do too much. Writer/director Mike Cahill is unable to corral the various ideas into a compelling story. It's obvious what it's trying to do but it struggles to make it interesting. I still give it full marks for its ambitions despite its failure to achieve its full intention.

This movie is just barely watchable. Basically it consists of irritatingly cutsie baby-faced actors poorly imitating intelligent scientists engaged in deep philosophical conversation. The way the actors interact with each other and their environment barely resembles reality.

The romance is shallow and cringe-worthy, like something a preteen would think up: Anonymous hook-ups and stalking somehow portrayed as an appealing, convincing backdrop to a life-changing romance.

The main character is a scientist who has exactly two coworkers, and zero managers or bosses or advisors, throughout his entire career, and can fly around the world at a moments notice on a whim.

Usually I'm not one to criticize the "science" in a movie like this, but they didn't even try! In the end it comes down to a guy randomly finding a little girl on the street, (of course she's the right girl, of course she speaks English!) and dragging her into a hotel, and no one raises an eyebrow at this. Then he gives her a multiple choice test in the most biased and error-prone way imaginable. Then even though the questions were all 1:3/33% chance, for some reason its unimpressive that she got 44% correct. Statistically, that would impressive if there wasn't someone emotionally attached to the outcome and who knows all the right answers, staring at the test-taker in the face while they make their choices.

Then the ending is open-ended in a way that is intended to be though-provoking and deep, but actually is anti-climactic.

Okay, so now that my ranting is out of the way, actually the movie isn't that bad. It has some touching moments occasionally, its worth watching if you're bored. But the ending leaves much to be desired, it feels unfinished, and overall the movie just seems like its geared to appeal to preteens whose brains are not fully formed and don't really have a fleshed-out concept of how the adult-world works.

Greetings again from the darkness. The evening I saw this one, I tweeted "Mike Cahill is one of today's most intriguing filmmakers". After a few days to think about it, that belief remains so. A double feature of this and his previous film "Another Earth" could keep the conversation flowing for days and weeks.

Evolution vs Spirituality is the main theme here. Miohael Pitt plays molecular biologist Ian Gray, who is working diligently to prove that the evolution of the eye is the scientific proof debunking creationism and spirituality. Ian's petri dish view of life is challenged when he meets free-spirited Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). This takes opposites attract to a whole new level ... in fact, opposites actually detract ... from the story and tone. While Sofi causes cracks in Ian's convictions, their ultimate split is actually a turning point for the film. The second half is extremely entertaining and thought-provoking.

Leaping ahead a few years, we find Ian married to his previous lab assistant Karen (Brit Marling). These two have an intriguing bond, and the birth of their first child sends the two scientists back into research mode ... including some globe trotting. Retina scanning technology plays a huge role here, and leads Ian to India where he searches for proof of this new theory.

This existential trip has an inordinate number of coincidences, lucky breaks, and philosophical discussions ... not to mention a rainbow range of eye glass styles. If you enjoy films that generate post-viewing discussions, Mr. Cahil is proving himself as the go-to filmmaker. Whether you fall on the side of science or spirituality, or somewhere in-between, this film seeks to prove the eyes have it.

When I began watching this title, I was almost immediately caught by the beautiful acting. What developed before my eyes was an alternative, yet gorgeously presented love story of two strangers that become familiar to each other.

Probably my favorite part of the movie are the small details, like the character's fable for photographing eyes, that mix beautifully with the artsy way of filming.

But at some point the film lost me. First the kind of bizarre death of the female main character, then the destruction of the just established love story that leads to an end that leaves me a bit unsure what to think.

While I get that spiritual things may or may not exist, the end almost seems a bit fanatic to me, especially given that I don't get how it connects to the first part of the movie. You wouldn't need this whole relationship to tell the story and it seems a bit cheap how the beginning establishes details later used for the message.

I would certainly rate this one higher if it sticked to how it began. This way I'm still unsure what the agenda of this film is. 6/10.

I loved this movie. I see many people complaining about it being a movie where religion defeats science, but I didn't see it this way. It is a sci fi movie. Fi stands for fiction as we know it. It is not supposed to be a documentary on evolution and biology but include a story about something that is now what we can see being proved by science.

Second, the ending is open for interpretation. And I liked it. The test fails. The girl is afraid of the elevator, but so what? Kids are afraid of many things that can be a coincidence. I actually loved the scene of the test being done. I am an atheist. And when the movie started and I got the main theme I thought that hopefully it is not about religion defeating science. Yet there I was watching the girl after several correct answers giving incorrect ones and feeling a weird disappointment. At the end when Karen asks Ian how he felt he says "kind of foolish", this is basically what I did too. And then there was still a part of me hoping that the girl will say something that will see us a Sofi being part of her. And she did it with the elevator. And I think it Sofi, yet as I said keeps our interpretation open. For all we know she is just claustrophobic.

Another thing is that I think it is supposed to simply say that there is so much more out there that we can't explain yet. That can be scientific and proved by data but that we don't even imagine. And I am not talking about God. Science just keeps developing and one day people may be studying things that we can't imagine now. And it will be a scientist like Ian, who is willing to go and test something to make sure that what he doesn't believes in is incorrect instead of dismissing it.

To me the movie wasn't predictable. I didn't see the trailer before watching it and just read a one sentence description. So luckily for me the main idea and what will happen weren't open from the start which made the movie more enjoyable.

The acting was perfect. I liked how incredibly natural these people felt to me. The main character also being so complex. He isn't dull as people referred to him. He is normal. But being normal includes so many parts. He is the guy who believes in data but just for the hell of it follows the number 11. His attitude towards the female characters of the movie and changing of it. We can see him starting to respect Karen after dismissing her as a first year student he needs to get rid of. Somehow one feels the two are right for each other yet he ends up with Sofi at first, who is so different. Yet we get the passion that can make us miss the huge differences between us and the person we are with which gets to his mind in that fatal night in the elevator, as he then describes it to Karen. His character is important to the drama romance part of the movie and represent the humanity so well.

The little girl Kashish playing Salomina was also good and it is her first part! I love how vivid her face was when she was answering the questions in the hotel room.

Well, the movie was sure impressive. I just don't get why Ian didn't contact Dr. Simmons to talk about what she is researching. But this could be because he wanted to try first his own thing. And this way also getting a closure that he said he was missing after Sofi's death.

I will look out for more work of the director and the actors as I was impressed.

To enjoy many good stories, you have to suspend disbelief. I enjoyed I Origins but would like to address some problems in execution rather than in the overall theme.

The overall suspense of finding the answer to the question of life and reincarnation overwhelmingly understated the agnostic, anti-theist, or atheist cases. This can be forgiven given that romance is much harder to portray with dead-sober rationals like these.

The filmmaker wisely chose to end the story with affirmation of the main character's existential beliefs without hard proof. This is essential to films like these. If they completely resolved the philosophical dilemma, the film would have been panned.

The most glaring error lies with the testing method he used on the young Indian girl with the same eyes as his ex-girlfriend. It was utterly unscientific from the start. Others have pointed out small errors in the plot and science of the film but this one is almost unforgivable. When he asks her to choose one out of three pictures, he relays if it is correct or incorrect to his wife which is obvious psychological manipulation of the girl. This would invalidate the test results. At the end, the girl even asks if she did poorly on the test clearly revealing the case. I can accept the better than 33% test results but the error in testing methodology left a sour taste in my mouth.

In hindsight, I realize it was done to allow quick analysis of the results thereby moving the story forward without extra scenes or dialogue. I have yet to determine whether or not it is acceptable. I will let it go. It's a movie, not a scientific treatise. I Origins is worth a watch.

I wanted to like this movie, after enjoying the director's previous film "Another Earth," but this one just seemed half-baked.

Major character flaws with the main character Ian who repeatedly states he only believes in the scientific process and in data, suddenly acting according to superstitious numerology following the number 11 to try and track down this girl he slept with once and now is actively stalking. Long story short, his stalking is not confronted by either his subject nor the people at his workplace who see it plainly, and the numerology aspect is dropped as soon as it's brought up.

Moving on, the women characters in the film are pretty one-dimensional, with Ian's first "wife"/stalking subject Sofi being a stereotypical foreign whimsical sex goddess who entreats him to believe in the supernatural because love or whatever, but her beliefs aren't ever explored or defined in the slightest, and he still goes through with "marrying" her even though they don't really see eye to eye at all. Pun intended.

The marriage, by the way, is ridiculous. They're both adults and show up at a city office to get married completely oblivious to how marriage works. So whimsical, so romantic! They then exchange rings anyway and proclaim themselves married. So whimsical, so romantic! Skipping a bad scene at the lab, his new "wife" dies the same day in an elevator accident. So whimsical, so disposable!

His second wife and lab assistant Karen seems to latch onto Ian as soon as Sofi dies, because clearly this stalker is marriage material (she even caught him creeping on Sofi earlier in the film, but rather than be repulsed by it oh whatever). Years later, his science book comes out based on what seems in the film to be mostly her work done while he was out stalking, but whatever, he becomes famous and she becomes pregnant because that's what she's there for I guess.

Oh, and forget about the Bechdel Test, I'm pretty sure this film fails that.

Moving on, the film's climax is when Karen, the scientific type, entreats him to go to India to track down/stalk this girl who might be the reincarnation of his first wife because they share the same eyes. Because that's what a rationally/scientifically minded wife would do. This after some other doctor runs a test on their son for autism but really she wasn't testing for autism but for reincarnation, because that's what doctors do in real life. Guess what though, this doctor is also promptly discarded in the plot even though you'd think maybe duder would have wanted to follow up with her on their shared hypothesis-slash-lunacy.

Weeks after Ian arrives in India, he finally finds the 7-year-old girl, brings her back to his hotel room unchallenged (because that's what you do with your plot when you're a lazy writer) and runs a test to see if she remembers her previous life as his "wife." Are you rolling your eyes yet?

Well, surprise, she fails the test, and he feels foolish. Then they go to take the elevator back downstairs again and the girl breaks down crying and they hug and apparently that disproves science so The End! It's the feel-good disaster of the summer.

I actually liked the idea of science and religion being put to the test, but the execution of this film, its poor character development, and people doing what no real person would do make this just sort of fall apart. There's still some very nice feel-good moments that are pulled off successfully, but there's so much bad to overlook it's not really worth it.

I initially wanted to give it 3 stars because I like Brit Marling and Michael Pitt, liked Steven Yeun, too.

But as watching it to the end became a real chore, I chose not to.

Was extremely annoyed by the Spanish-French actress, her character was such an annoying know-it-all, I wished she really had been from another planet, that would have made it interesting...

The beginning immediately threw me off, basing a relationship on some pseudo spiritual talk, ending in many guys' fantasy (being forced into a toilet and f- ---), and from that developed an obsession (get it), lots of sex (okay), and pseudo-spiritual talk from the scientist - 'my atoms have always loved you' - NOT meant as a joke (puke) - apparently true love. Yeah. Not in MY universe.

All this sloooowwwww, and booooring, and no fuuuuun,,.

She deserved to die, I was glad of it. Geez, the know-it-all-who-is-SO-deep-AND- is-called-'Sophie' - puh-leeeeze! An insult to my intelligence, and my movie-bones. She is rude and moody and difficult. I was neither invested in her or their relationship or anything really.

What a silly script. Pointless. Ridiculous. Cheesy. Predictable.

Read a book on morphic resonance instead. Or re-watch 2001, which plays with this idea in a much more entertaining way (though at times being just as boring...^^)

I am a romantic. I think I'm a bit spiritual alongside my atheism - those two are not mutually exclusive, by the way. I can suspend reason for a film, if it draws me in and takes me for a ride. This is a roadwreck. But to each their own...

But this iris-doubles idea was just silly and dumb, as was the whole script.

Should have known after 5 minutes this was going nowhere slow...

Watch 'In Your Eyes' - now THAT's a good movie!!! :-)

If it is dire because the "scientist" has zero idea of how to not lead the results of a social experiment.

Or if it is genius because it let's you have what you want. If you want to believe #spoiler .... that the girl remembers the lift from a previous life you can. If you want to look at the way the interview is filmed and consider the girl thinks she "makes a bad test" and was breaking down because she is back to the street after failing to please the rich foreigner , you can see ,the cues for that too.

Spoiler alert. I was apparently at the same showing as the previous reviewer who did not enjoy this movie. I was one of the 150 wait listed and just barely got in to the sold out show. Only ten on the wait list got in. I am so glad I did because this turned out to be my favorite film at Sundance - I liked it even better than Whiplash which won the Grand Jury Dramatic prize and Audience award.

It had a similar impact on me as did the movie, Contact. It asks what if? It explores the intersection of the spiritual and science - just as Contact did. The science of biometrics is relatively new and I can imagine a growing data base of biometric eye scan data where supposedly, there can only be one signature per person just like fingerprints. If that is so, then what might it mean if duplicates are found? What might it mean if a duplicate is found of a deceased person? What if a person who has a duplicate of a deceased person's eye scan also has a deep, unconscious memory of things in the deceased person's life?

This was not a perfect movie - left hanging was what should be done about a severe breech of ethics on the part of a medical doctor who wanted to examine the protagonist's child on the "pretense" of following up on early signs of autism. Also, the protagonist had a serendipitous experience with the number 11, the meaning of which was never resolved.

Still, I expect this movie will generate a lot of dialog and buzz as more and more people see it.

Great movie.

It's a deep movie with some artistic and religious references all around the film. Even the main characters are like the opposites: The science man vs. the spiritual woman.

Besides, there are a lot of symbolical meanings of the objects to explain the "holy" meaning of things. For instance, opening the door at the end of the film represents opening yourself to the other side of the world just like Sofi said in the bedroom scene.

And also the obvious elevator scene which represents the main connection between the indian girl and Sofi can be explained in this way too.

These scenes are very impressive of course, however in general, the whole plot changes when Sofi dies in the middle of the movie. That's why the first part of the film feels like a romantic movie but the second part is a scientific adventure movie which is absolutely weird.

I wish that the storytelling of the movie was based on a more strict and direct narrative. Because of this, i lost the interest in the whole structure of the movie.

It could have been a cult film, i'm deeply sorry for that it obviously not.