| Uncertainty | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Scott McGehee David Siegel |
| Produced by | Becky Glupczynski Scott McGehee David Siegel |
| Written by | Scott McGehee David Siegel |
| Starring | Lynn Collins Joseph Gordon-Levitt Assumpta Serna Olivia Thirlby |
| Distributed by | IFC Films, Myriad Pictures (International) |
| Release date(s) | September 8, 2008 (TIFF) November 13, 2009 |
| Running time | 105 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Uncertainty is a 2008 indie drama and thriller film, written, produced, and directed by American independent filmmakers Scott McGehee and David Siegel, and starring Lynn Collins and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It was first released at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival.
Distribution rights were acquired by IFC Films and was limited released on November 13, 2009. It was simultaneously made available to cable viewers via Video-On-Demand.
The film was shot in HD on the Arriflex D-20.
Contents |
Bobby (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Kate (Lynn Collins) are a young couple who have been together ten months. Kate is 11 weeks pregnant. They can't make up their minds where to go on the Fourth of July,[1] or whether to have the baby, and decide to flip a coin. After Bobby flips the coin, they both run off Brooklyn Bridge in opposite directions. From that moment on we follow two separate storylines.
The one storyline takes place in Brooklyn, where Bobby and Kate decide to go visit Kate's family. On the way they pick up a stray dog, whose owner they try to locate. Kate's family has its own share of family drama, with an uncle of Kate who is institutionalized and suffers from memory loss, a brother who died five years earlier, and a sister who is taking a year off before going to college, much to her mother's dismay.
The other storyline takes place in Manhattan (beginning in Chinatown), where Bobby and Kate find a cellphone, which is worth $500,000. They try to set up an exchange, but after narrowly escaping pursuit from a killer, Bobby throws the cellphone onto a passing boat.
Both storylines end the next day, on a bridge, with the lines "What do you want to do now? / What do we do now? I don't know. I guess we just keep going".
The storylines are also set apart by the clothing of Bobby and Kate. In the Manhattan/Chinatown storyline, they both wear easily recognizable yellow, a dress for her and a t-shirt for him. While in the Brooklyn storyline, they are dressed in more subtle shades of green. In the first scene on the bridge Kate wears the yellow dress from the Manhattan story, while Bobby wears the outfit he'll wear in Brooklyn.
The title seems to be based on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, which can be illustrated in the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox, involving two particles moving off in opposite directions and having separate yet related properties.
Uncertainty has an approval rating of 54% on Rotten Tomatoes, from 24 reviews counted.[2]