How to be: the eternal question of “who I am”

I am sure that there is no one in the universe who has never thought about the „what am I doing in this world” topic. This problem and the chaotic interval that belongs to it usually happens in our early twenties just like in the case of Robert Pattinson, who gets into the life of Arthur in How to be and tries to figure out the meaning of his existence.

In Oliver Irving’s film this kind, ordinary and eternally lost boy is desperately seeking for a path to follow. His friends are concerned with their own problems, his girlfriend’s dropped him and his parents are interested in everything but him. Art - apart from suffering all day long or performing his depression as a singer in a small pub – observes everybody, picks up pieces from their personalities and in the meantime he tries to give himself some life-style advice. Initially from a book then directly from the author of it for he makes this always happy self-help guru, Dr. Ellington (Powell Jones) move into their house’s guestroom, in order to find solutions and analyze each period of the boy’s life together. This „action” brings some grotesque still lovely scene into the film as the doctor never leaves Arthur alone to direct his living. But his activity doesn’t prove to be successful – it’s always different and even more difficult to solve individual problems than dealing with universal ones. As a consequence, our hero or rather our loser has to fall back on measure his past, present and future by himself.

How to be is a film which draws attention to contemporary difficulties sometimes in a funny way but always honestly with the contribution of excellent actors. This movie tells a story which I consider that would never disappoint anyone.