I get suspicious when movies push lessons about life, as if movie realities can substitute for, rather than amplify, actual experience.<br /><br />In this, you're seeing the Genesis story of Jacob and Esau...this includes the parents who 'played favorites', the 'elder brother serving the younger', and the behind the scenes double cross ("Is that why he is called Jacob, because he has deceived me these two times?"). When Sives fails to suicide, his description of the nothingness is the revocation of Jacob's dream of the glorious ladder to Heaven. He wrestles an angel (the water rescue), and thence receives his blessing.<br /><br />So that's *what* it is -- can one launch a dark comedy off this platform?<br /><br />I think this was a shameful missed opportunity to stick to just that -- notions of comedy. It is crushed by the self-important tone of the drama, and the utterly unimaginative camera work. <br /><br />Also, there was a chance to augment this with borrowings from Kipling -- who knew how to be darkly self-effacing -- but all we get are the collections of dead writers (the bookstore).