Liloh After the Movie GIDEON! I never thought any Movie will ever touch my Heart so badly. This Movie so heartwarming. You laugh and you ll cry. French tend to make Movies too Dramatic, but this was different. Many people had problem with the End. The End was really frustrating and they added that song. I cried my eyes off. The song is about " love for a Mother." Very Intense and touching.Comparing this Movie to Rain Man, Rain man looks sillier. The Eighth Day (Le Huitième Jour)Recommendable for the ones, who sometimes enjoy Dramatic European Movies. Watched in the Original language, don't know if it is available in English Subtitels but German though.

Gordon-11 This film is about the unlikely friendship between a businessman and a man with Down Syndrome.The character development in this film is excellent. We get to believe that Harry is a businessman who neglects his family, and Georges is an innocent man who craves loving and care from the "normal" society. Acting is excellent, and the Cannes best actor award is well deserved.The fantasy scenes in the film highlights the fact that Georges misery towards his abandonment by his family, and his desire to be treated like a normal person. The song that gets played repeatedly also reinforces this message. The film shows that people who are mentally handicapped are good natured. We have been treating them with discrimination and neglect, a fact that is highlighted by the scene where Georges gives a present to the waitress in the kitchen). If we get to understand and share these people's world, both we and the mentally handicapped can become very happy.I was so drawn into the film and the characters' emotional experiences. It is a touching film for good natured souls.

tvgeek91 I found myself watching this movie in my French class, and, quite simply, I did not like it. I don't believe that either of the characters, Georges and Harry, were sympathetic by the end of the film. It is made clear that Georges cares about nobody but himself and we are supposed to care for him purely because he has down syndrome. Harry is so caught up in business that he didn't remember to pick up the two daughters that he supposedly cares about so much. He attacks his estranged wife and shows no sign of guilt for this over his sadness that she didn't agree to let him see his kids. I wouldn't let him see my kids if thats the way he behaved. Everything is all better at the end of the movie just because he set off some fireworks. That just doesn't make sense to me. In a movie that takes place in reality, the fantasy scenes were awkward and seemed to be squeezed in to anyplace that they could find and didn't convey a necessary message. Georges's sudden death at the end of the film was totally random and had very reason why it should occur. I don't regret seeing any movie, but if you're going to see a Daniel Auteuil movie I would recommend seeing Cache.

Harry T. Yung spoilersRecommended to me passionately by one IMDb correspondent and lent to me generously by another, The 8th Day finally found its place in my best films list. Heartfelt thanks to both.One phenomenon I've been experiencing recently is that when I watch a movie, my thought would be often linked to some others I have watched, recently and even not so recently. For The 8th Day, this thought association process is truly internationally: Italian 'La Finestra di fronte' (taking a mentally disturbed stranger into one's household), 'Russian' Vozvrashcheniye (driving away leaving a helpless person standing in torrential rain), Brazilian 'Central Station' (taking a total stranger on the road to look for his kin) and Japanese 'Hana-bi' (the fireworks on the beach). Come to think of it, such links can be extended to Hollywood's 'Love Actually' (a possible scenario if the characters played by Laura Linney and Rodrigo Santoro really got married, i.e. she with a mentally troubled brother). But I digress.Crudely generalized, The 8th Day could be seen as another odd-couple type of story, a unlikely relationship between George, born a mongol, and Harry, a hardened sales executive. The physical convergence happens a little bit into the story, when dejected Harry driving in rain at night hits George's dog. The spiritual convergence actually comes earlier in a parallel situation: George longing for his deceased mother and Harry's daughters under the custody of his estranged wife longing for their unreachable father. Through laughs and tears, we follow the friendship developed between Harry and George, ending in the heart-wrenching irony of George becoming Harry's savior while he himself is lost in that corner of his own world that cannot be touched by anyone but he beloved, late mother. 'On the eighth day, God created George', a gift, but also a misfit, maybe too good for this world.There are some special motif in this film that are worth mentioning. At the beginning is the use of arrows, perhaps to graphically drive home the message that we, the human species, are lost. Then, both at the beginning and at the end, there is an abundance of beautiful close-up shots of insects, which some would consider as the most humble of all living species.