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"An elegant suicide is the ultimate work of art." The only thing I have to say is holy shit. Ik people don’t read long reviews, but I’m sorry I have to defend this movie for my life. To be honest, the only reason I started watching this movie was because Ryan Gosling looked grungy, but I now believe it is underappreciated and a hidden gem. I'm not sure why it got such low ratings; it's honestly very well thought out. This film took the most simple ending (it was all a dream) and turned it into a heartbreaking story. Many people criticize the transitions, yet that is the objective of the film. We see it through Henry's eyes: the final thoughts of a dying man whose mind is constructing a storyline in the shape of a flashback or a created fiction filled with remorse. Obviously, a dream's plot will be inconsistent; nothing is consistent; objects change, people teleport, words are repeated, and so on. They did such a good job incorporating things from the "actual" world into Henry's dream world that they don't make sense, yet they do. Let’s take for example,Henry hearing "voices," yet everything he hears is truly from the real world since he is half awake and half hallucinating. The characters are bland on design since Henry doesn't know them and hence provides them just the most basic emotions with no depth. That's why Henry is the only one who appears to be upset and suffers the most in this film. Furthermore, the attention to detail makes this movie a 10/10 for me, Tristan Reveur, the artist that Henry is obsessed with, if translated means melancholic and dreamer, referring to the fact that this movie or the 3/4 of this movie are fabricated, simply being a sad dream fabricated by Henry's guilt-stricken brain. The references to Freud are also brilliant. Freud discusses the unconscious and how your troubles might materialize in your dreams. The ring, the tire, the conversation, his parents' death, and him bleeding out all serve as pointers towards the actual ending of this movie. This film is something you need revisit; I don't think you can enjoy it without seeing it again; the complex discussion and easter eggs may appear to be poorly placed props or lousy screenplay, but they are not. Everything in this film is calculated down to the last detail. In my opinion, the cast did an outstanding job in making this film a treasure. You can criticize this film all you want, calling it pretentious, stupid, and incomprehensible, but you can't deny the amount of work that went into it. I swear to god I think this movie changed something in me. As Tristan Reveur once said: "bad art is more tragically beautiful than good art 'cause it documents human failure."