Anesthesia Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Anesthesia Blu-ray Movie Review

Life and Its Discontents

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 26, 2016

The multi-stranded narrative following numerous unrelated characters whose paths happen to cross (or whose stories echo each other thematically) is almost a cinema sub-genre by now, and such films are usually epic in scale. In order to play out its many narrative layers, a film like Magnolia, Babel or Crash demands the audience's attention for an extended running time (very extended, in the case of Magnolia), while it switches among individual stories, wrapping disparate elements in larger themes. But now we have Anesthesia from writer/director Tim Blake Nelson, who is best known as an actor (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) and whose previous directing credits include O, The Grey Zone and Leaves of Grass. Nelson orchestrates his overlapping plots in a trim 90 minutes, and he doesn't seem to have sacrificed anything in the process. Anesthesia may not have the cinematic flourish of P.T. Anderson or Alejandro González Iñárritu, but Nelson has assembled a remarkable cast that lends depth and nuance to every scene.

Anesthesia opens with an unseen incident on the streets of New York City that leaves several people grievously injured. The story then jumps back several days to follow the separate paths that have collided at this moment.

The character whose story looms largest is Walter Zarrow (Sam Waterston), a university professor of philosophy and a gifted teacher whose unassuming manner and enthusiasm for his subject makes him a popular lecturer. Zarrow's dedication is evident in his willingness to extend himself to aid a promising student (Kristen Stewart) struggling with personal problems. Now on the verge of retirement, Zarrow is using his final classes as a summing-up of his life's work, and he seems almost amused as he shares the news that a lifetime of intellectual inquiry has left him not only with no answers, but with a sneaking suspicion that life may be a cruel joke on the living. As Zarrow looks forward to more leisure time with Marcia (Glenn Close), the wife to whom he is devoted and for whom he buys flowers every Friday, the chief accomplishment of his contemplations seems to be a peaceful acceptance of whatever comes next.

Other characters in Anesthesia are less philosophical about their predicaments. Zarrow's daughter-in-law, Jill (Jessica Hecht), has just received the sobering news that she may have ovarian cancer, and she and husband Adam (Nelson) are struggling to cope as Jill prepares for exploratory surgery. Their worries are compounded by the discovery that their two teenage children, Ella and Hal (Hannah Marks and Ben Konigsberg), have become habitual pot smokers, lighting up so frequently on the rooftop of the family's apartment building that neighbors have complained. Ella and Hal have their own typical teenage problems, as they deal with school pressures, sexual exploration and now a parent who may be gravely ill.

Elsewhere in the city, a heroin addict named Joe (K. Todd Freeman) is the subject of a forcible intervention by his boyhood friend, Jeffrey (Michael K. Williams), a successful attorney with a demanding schedule. Despite his professional obligations, Jeffrey will invest substantial time and energy attempting to rescue an addict who defiantly announces, again and again, that he does not want to be saved. The reason for Jeffrey's stubborn persistence in an obviously futile pursuit is not immediately apparent but eventually snaps into focus.

An unmarried couple, Sam and Nicole (Corey Stoll and Mickey Sumner), are spending a romantic interlude together in the city, but the atmosphere is melancholy. For reasons that are only gradually revealed, they have no future together. This may be the last time they meet.

In New Jersey, a former investment banker named Sarah (Gretchen Mol) is questioning her decision to quit work, move to suburbia and devote all of her time to housekeeping and raising two daughters. Waiting in her car in the pickup lane at her children's school, Sarah finds herself feuding with another mother (Natasha Gregson Wagner) over petty conflicts that emphasize just how small her world has become. A visit from a friend and former co-worker, Meredith (Gloria Reuben), who has remained on Wall Street, only reinforces Sarah's regrets. When her kids are asleep, she sits alone, drinking heavily, second-guessing her choices and worrying that her husband's prolonged absences are for something other than business travel, as he claims.

As Anesthesia overlaps these individual storylines, Nelson weaves a tapestry of pain and frustration to which Prof. Zarrow's lectures provide a running commentary on the futility of the pursuit of happiness. In a subtle irony, the film is set at Christmas, the trappings of which are visible everywhere in displays of lights and trees with decorations. The season of obligatory cheer in which the suicide rate routinely spikes upward is an appropriate background for Nelson's varied tales of life's tribulations. In Anesthesia's bleak world, happiness and fulfillment remain perpetually out of reach, even as (in Prof. Zarrow's formulation) "Eros seduces us into striving for the falsely ethereal, and worse, propagating, and thereby subjecting another generation to the same suffering we endure". Small acts of kindness and unexpected moments of connection are life's only saving grace, and even these are of dubious benefit.

Anesthesia Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Specific information about the shooting format of Anesthesia was unavailable, but the production appears to be digital, as is usually the case with micro-budgeted independent films today. The cinematographer was Christina Voros, who has shot Child of God and As I Lay Dying for James Franco and whose documentary background informs Anesthesia's casually observational style. MPI Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is a capable presentation featuring solid black levels, good detail and an absence of noise or interference. The film was shot in real locations in and around New York City, and the palette is quotidian and naturalistic, creating a believable environment that helps ground the script's dramatic contrivances. With no extras on the disc, MPI has used the entire BD-25 to achieve an average bitrate of 26.93 Mbps, with a capable encode.

Anesthesia Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Anesthesia's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, is focused on dialogue, which is the track's most critical element and is cleanly reproduced in the front center. The surrounds are used almost entirely for the widely varying environments in which the stories are set, from busy city streets to the dead quiet of a suburban house late at night. Jeff Danna (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) provided the unobtrusive score.

As always with MPI titles, an alternate PCM 2.0 track is included.

Anesthesia Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Regrettably, the disc's only extra is a trailer (1080p; 1.85:1; 2:03). It would have been interesting to hear the writer/director describe the development of the project, which reportedly took several decades.

At startup, the disc also plays trailers for Dixieland, A Ballerina's Tale, A Perfect Day and Every Thing Will Be Fine.

Anesthesia Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Anesthesia will frustrate viewers looking for resolution or catharsis, because these aren't Nelson's goal. He's after the revelations of character that occur in moments of confrontation or crisis, and the film's carefully structured vignettes gain in dramatic power from their juxtaposition. (The cast is uniformly impressive.) The film is most likely to appeal to viewers intrigued by the questions that Prof. Zarrow poses in his lectures and who accept, as the professor does, that such questions remain unanswerable. For those viewers, Anesthesia is highly recommended, despite the disappointing lack of extras.