Review of Toto the Hero

What happens to a person when a small, crazy idea becomes an obsession ? Any obsession has no meaning unless efforts are made to take it to fruition. This is something which has been nicely described by Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael in "Toto the Hero". As a film about the change of identities, there is a good depiction of family atmospheres in the narrative where one gets to see the major protagonists at different stages of their lives. This effect is created by showing all the three major stages of a person's life namely childhood, adulthood and old age. There is a wise usage of time as events related to the protagonists' lives moves back and forth between past and the present, old age, youth and childhood in order to give viewers an idea about the stage where the things must have gone wrong. It is not so often that revenge gets transformed into pardon in a film. However, Toto-our film's hero shows that he is really a true hero as he sacrifices his obsession in order to achieve overall feeling of greatness. He achieves that distinction by forgoing violence and revenge. Lastly, it must be told that "Toto Le Héros" is not really a film for intellectuals. However, cinema is believed to have scored a minor victory over "Philosophy" as one of the villainous characters of this film is called Kant.