I'll probably see Mitchellville as many times as I've seen Casablanca. ...and for many of the same reasons. There's a lot to this movie. It's honest as the day is long* and as deep as a man's soul. But since it plays on many levels, you can enjoy it without probing the depths too.
Mitchellville is a town, or is it? He's talking to a company shrink, or...? About a dream, or...? To me the exciting thing about this film besides it's striking beauty and mystery, is the ethereal way it deals with concepts of perception of reality and at the same time quietly but boldly takes on some of life's most provocative issues.
This is a multi-themed well nuanced film, with plenty of symbolism and eerie relationships with time and space. Yet all aspects of it combine to create a sensitive deep statement on love, interwoven with taking on life-purpose issues, the path and fruits of greed (both personal and corporate), power, loss, serious compromise, racism, and the challenges of living in our culture as an artist/ musician (or even just an honest genuine person) with life and death aspects on all levels. What in life is worth dying for.... ?
Often visually stunning... usage of stark sets, lighting, color (and lack there of). Great characterization. These people are so real to me. Beautiful evocative music. All combine to create a straightforward spirituality about the workings of the world, despite it's ills. With all its complexities, I still felt a comforting sense of "just the facts, m'am..." with the message: "you can't stop when you make a mistake, you have to keep going". And that I see illustrated in both the personal and corporate historical sense, as a base line for life and it's challenges. Definitely thought provoking.
* keeping in mind that days dependably lengthen and then shorten throughout the year.