I Origins

I Origins is a 2014 American science fiction drama film. The independent production premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on 18 January 2014 and, distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, opened in limited release on 18 July 2014. It won the Best Feature Length Film Award at the Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya on 11 October 2014.

Written and directed by Mike Cahill.

Ian Gray

Every living person on this planet has their own unique pair of eyes. Each their own universe.
- Opening line.
When I was a child, I realised that the camera was designed exactly like the human eye, taking in light through a lens, forming it into images. I began taking as many pictures of eyes as I possibly could.
You ever feel like when you met someone, they ^[sic] fill ^[sic] this hole inside of you, and then when they're ^[sic] gone, you feel that space painfully vacant?
Cremation is like obliteration. I mean, what if, in the future, the scientists—what if they can reconstitute our selves through our D. N. A.?
I'm not religious. … Religion is based on scripture written by men thousands of years ago. Those beliefs can't be changed or challenged. They're fixed.

In science, great thinkers have written things very long ago, but every generation improves upon them. The words are not holy. Einstein is a brilliant man, but he's not our god; he's one step in the evolution of knowledge, but we always continue to step forward.

Karen

Turning over a rock and finding nothing is progress.
To me, the best thing about living like a lab rat is that sometimes, really rare times, you actually discover something.
There is someone there with Sofi's exact iris pattern. The eyes and the brain are connected. If—if the cellular structure in the eye is reoccurring from person to person, then maybe something in the brain carries over as well, like a neurological link. Maybe the eye really is some kind of window to the soul.
- The phrase Karen is referencing comes from 255c of Plato's Phaedrus:
  And when this feeling continues and he is nearer to him and embraces him, in gymnastic exercises and at other times of meeting, then the fountain of that stream, which Zeus when he was in love with Ganymede named Desire, overflows upon the lover, and some enters into his soul, and some when he is filled flows out again; and as a breeze or an echo rebounds from the smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which are the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one; there arriving and quickening the passages of the wings, watering them and inclining them to grow, and filling the soul of the beloved also with love.

Sofi Elizondo

I want you to burn me.
We're already married in the spiritual world.
I think it's dangerous to play God.

Dialogue

Sofi Elizondo: Do you know the story of the Phasianidæ?

Ian Gray: The…no, what's that?

Sofi Elizondo: It's a bird that experiences all of time in one instant. And she sings the song of love and anger and fear and joy and sadness all at once, all combined into one magnificent sound.

Ian Gray: Where are you from?

Sofi Elizondo: Another planet. … And this bird, when she meets the love of her life, is both happy and sad: happy because she sees that for him it is the beginning, and sad because she knows it is already over.

Sofi Elizondo: When I saw you that night, I…I had the feeling that I had known you. Actually, I felt like you knew me.

Ian Gray: What do you mean?

Sofi Elizondo: Like we are connected from past lives.

Ian Gray: I don't believe in that.

Sofi Elizondo: What do you believe in?

Ian Gray: I'm a scientist; I believe in data.

Sofi Elizondo: Why are you working so hard to disprove God?

Ian Gray: "Disprove"? Who proved that God was there in the first place?

Ian Gray: What's your favourite flower?

Sofi Elizondo: Dandelions.

Ian Gray: Okay, why?

Sofi Elizondo: 'Cause they're free, wild, and you can't buy them.

Ian Gray: I do believe we've known each other since forever, though.

Sofi Elizondo: Really?

Ian Gray: Yeah. You know how? When the big bang happened, all the atoms in the universe, they were all smashed together into one little dot that exploded outward. So, my atoms and your atoms were certainly together then, and, who knows, probably smashed together several times in the last 13.7 billion years. So, my atoms have known your atoms, and they've always known your atoms. My atoms have always loved your atoms.

Sofi Elizondo: How many senses do worms have?

Ian Gray: They have two: smell and touch. Why?

Sofi Elizondo: So, they live without any ability to see or even know about light, right? The notion of light to them is unimaginable.

Ian Gray: Yeah.

Sofi Elizondo: But we humans, we know that light exists—all around them, right on top of them, they cannot sense it. But with a little mutation, they do. Right?

Ian Gray: Correct.

Sofi Elizondo: So, Doctor Eye, perhaps some humans, rare humans, have mutated to have another sense—a spirit sense—and can perceive a world that is right on top of us, everywhere, just like the light on these worms.

Priya Varma: You know, a scientist once asked the Dalai Lama, "What would you do if something scientific disproved your religious beliefs?" And he said, after much thought, "I would look at all the papers. I'd take a look at all the research and really try to understand things. And in the end, if it was clear that the scientific evidence disproved my spiritual beliefs, I would change my beliefs."

Ian Gray: That's a good answer.

Priya Varma: Ian, what would you do if something spiritual disproved your scientific beliefs?

Quotes about the film

Big ideas can sometimes lead to great motion pictures or, as in the case of I Origins, colossal misfires. A wannabe examination of faith versus science, Mike Cahill's follow-up to Another Earth fails to provide convincing dramatization of his thematic thesis.
His use of metaphors, especially those involving eyes, is heavy-handed and obvious. (The title being a prime example.)
- James Berardinelli, "I Origins (United States, 2014)," ReelViews.net (26 July 2014).
Cahill spends the entire film bringing a sense of wonder to the desperately rational Ian, and if the film takes on a glow toward the end, that glow feels well-earned.

The tie between the science and spirituality has been made.

- Tom Long, "Review:'I Origins' finds the balance between science and spirit," The Detroit News (8 August 2014).
Although the film and the actors keep on looking good, this solemn, soppy, fantasy has nothing to say about science or faith.
- Liam Lacey, "I, Origins: Luminous cinematography, but one step back in intellectual credibility," The Globe and Mail (25 July 2014).

Cast

Michael Pitt — Ian Gray
Brit Marling — Karen
Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey — Sofi Elizondo
Steven Yeun — Kenny
Archie Panjabi — Priya Varma
Cara Seymour — Dr. Jane Simmons
Venida Evans — Margaret Dairy
William Mapother — Darryl Mackenzie
Kashish — Salomina

External links

Wikipedia

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I Origins

Official website
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