NOSTALGIA Starring Jon Hamm and Catherine Keener is Stirring and Worth Viewing

Dir./screenwriter Mark Pellingten has had previous hits with "Jerry Maguire" and "Almost Famous" with its A list stars.  NOSTALGIA is stocked with A list stars in a movie that has been sadly overlooked.  The cast includes Jon Hamm & Catherine Keener as brother & sister and Ellen Burstyn & Nick Offerman as mother & son.  The movie is an overlapping triptych story that is a poetic eulogy to what gives life meaning.  The film begins with an appraiser (Ron Ortiz) coming to the home of an elderly man (Bruce Dern) to provide an estimation of value to anything amidst the accumulation of detritus in the home he's lived for decades.  Ortiz appears in the 2nd linked story.  The stories merge separated by a hazed colored striations.  Ortiz comes upon the charred remains of a home owned by Burstyn who is both bitter and distraught.  She tells Ortiz she rain into her flaming home to retrieve a baseball that was her husband's prized possession.  Burstyn takes the Ted Williams autographed baseball to be appraised by a baseball memorabilia seller (Jon Hamm).  Hamm listens sympathetically to Burstyn's lament the baseball's inherent value stemming from its association with her late husband.  Hamm confirms the ball as rare & official and gives it an appraisal of $80-$100,000.  The 3rd & most poignant chapter brings Hamm to his childhood home where he & his sister (Catherine Keener) are dismantling the home & sorting through the remnants of what remains.  Hamm doesn't understand his sister's attachments to artifacts or her need to rent a storage locker although storage lockers are a treasure troves for his memorabilia business.  While sifting through their parents attic, Keener's high school daughter Talli comes begrudgingly to help.  Talli pleads with her mom while texting on her cell to please release her from this chore of clearing out all this clutter which has no significance to her generation and let her join her friends.   The film is an ode to the disappearance of epistolary communications, music listened to from albums on phonographs and photograph filled albums.  As Marvin Gaye sang on an early album "Ain't nothing like the real thing baby!"  A poster in Talli's bedroom hauntingly reads "Love Before It's Too Late."  The significance of value attributed to tangible artifacts can be profound.  The omnipotence of love for another far outweighs any trinket.  Things are replaceable human beings are not, but tangible tokens have the power to continue a connection to loved ones.  NOSTALGIA is a film of haunting deja vu beauty that benefits from an excellent cast and solemn storytelling.