The Invisibles

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His boss skips over him for a promotion, his marriage risks crumbling, and he hides tragedy by walking through the motions of life without living. That’s what Charlie’s (Tim Blake Nelson) life looks like when he disappears. Like a ghost, he still sees and can move around in the real world, but his ability to interact with the world—and, most importantly, to be seen by others—completely vaporizes. The only people who can see him are the other “invisibles.” 

The Invisibles’ greatest strength is its core science-fiction conceit. My translating Charlie’s indifference and emotional numbness into literal invisibility, Canadian writer-director Andrew Currie (co-written with Colin Aussant) plays with several interrelated metaphors through the invisibility. The screenplay is at its strongest when it brushes up against the boredom of suburban nine-to-five life and depression. The few scenes in his insurance company office are the most inspired and most dialed-in. They also recall MONDAYS, a Groundhog Day scenario set in a corporate office where every day already looks the same. Both brilliantly apply small budget and high-concept sci-fi ideas to playfully prod at mundane 21st-century middle-class life. Tim Blake Nelson also just looks like a guy who has wasted his life clicking away on his office keyboard and amplifies the film’s interest in the quotidian. 

This is only on the periphery of The Invisibles, as is the numbness Charlie experiences through what appears to be some sort of loss-agitated depression. The film cares much more about using the concept as a vehicle for grief, and that’s just a theme that never leaves the multiplex. We piece together the traumatic event of Charlie’s past as he does, and as emotionally effective as that is, it’s also awash in sentimentalism and predictable plot developments. We’ve seen it done before.

Two of the showstealers are two of the film’s Canadian talents, Nathan Alexis as Nick and Bruce Greenwood as Carl the bartender. Both play supporting roles as Charlie’s invisible friends. Nick is the first person he meets who can see him and hear him, and he helps guide him into this new world and understand its rules and flow. It’s something of a spirit guide role à la Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. A Nakota Sioux actor from Edmonton, Alexis’s role as the de facto spirit guide could be a lot more isolating and tokenizing had he not also been given his own character journey to work through involving a waitress in the real world he is fond of and suicide ideation. 

Greenwood is certainly the most recognizable face, and his part is small, but his rustic voice that once brought authority and moral clarity to Star Trek’s Captain Pike here exerts that same authoritative power for more cultic (though not evil) reasons. He is as close to an antagonist as the film ever gets, and it never gets too close either. He has different and less healthy ideas about the differences between the real world and the invisible one than does Charlie, who wants to get back to his wife Hannah (Gretchen Mol).

Even though I’ve used the term “science-fiction” in this review, and that’s how most of the film’s online marketing descriptions present it, The Invisibles isn’t really science fiction. “Science” is nowhere near this picture beyond a little boy’s obsession with rocket ships and the music’s dependency on David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” What happens to Charlie would be better described as fantastical. Fantasy also better describes the tone of the film. Even when it’s uncomfortable or grieving, the lullaby jingles of the score, like a parent gently rocking a child to sleep in their arms, have a calming and comforting presence. The world of the invisibles is far from a sci-fi dystopia. The friends he meets there are inviting and indispensable parts of his journey back to the real world. There is something a little charming about Currie’s direction in its ability to maintain optimism and hope in Charlie’s darkest moments. Hopefully, that quality is contagious.