>its ok to be ordinary because average people make the universe go round

I really didn’t read this in the movie’s messaging to be honest and I think it’d be kind of uncharitable to frame the movie’s approach to an “ordinary life” in these terms.

Nor do I think that it posits that people ought to be ordinary to enable or justify the existence of extraordinary people.

I think we watched different movies.

I think the movie’s approach to “ordinary” life is not utilitarian, that it is for something else, in fact the entire premise is to question the idea that any life is for something, even that of a movie star or a super-genius.

It reaches the same spot a lot of existential philosophy was at at the beginning of last century: meaning cannot be a function of something external to the self, be it a grand destiny like curing diseases or something humbler like being part of the average masses whose diseases are cured.

I can’t re-tread the development of absurdism in a reddit comment, but in short it’s something along the lines of an unresolvable contradiction that, through sheer stubborness we manage to resolve in little, random things. To borrow a metaphor, it’s to add one and minus one and get something other than zero.

I mean… kind of, but I would say the movie more throws out the idea of an “ordinary” life. In my interpretation the movie showed how incredible life is, and can be, no matter who you are. The husband (I watched it months ago in theaters, don’t remember names) saying he would be really happy with a life of doing laundry with his wife shows how there is value in any existence. Every life has immense value/depth and is worth living and loving.

The philosophy I took away is “true, unconditional love heals all”