A young man is told he has a terminal illness and takes time to experience life before his time expires. Joshua Jackson plays the lead character of Ben Tyler. After told of his illness, Ben buys a motorcycle on a long repressed whim and leaves his bewildered family and fiancée behind, who can’t understand why he distances himself from them or take any action concerning his illness. They can’t understand what Ben is doing IS his action. He motors across Canada to see the country and to seek and share what he hopes are meaningful experiences. A narrator (Campbell Scott) tells us here and there how Ben’s actions impacts the lives of strangers he meets, in small but sometimes meaningful ways.
While not significantly deep or dramatic, the film is insightful enough to be a fine portrayal of a man looking for life’s big meaning and his small place in it. Ben is a pretty blank slate to us, there is not much told to us of who he is and what sort of person he is, just enough that we can identify with his character to go along with him in his journey. His family doesn’t understand of course why Ben is doing this when his time is so short, but we can see this is just a thirst he has to slake before his time is up. We can see that some of his urgency has to do with the thought that Ben assumed like we all do that death was something far in the horizon. It is also partly his connection to his fiancée and questioning his relationship--the trip is partially a test of his love for her.
There are lots of beautiful sweeping views of rural Canada and while I think the narration seems a bit odd fitting, it does help us to see what happens after Ben leaves a stranger, and how connected humans are. Even the smallest interactions have some meaning.
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