The most beautiful moment in this film occurs when Cameron is at the Art Institute of Chicago. He's standing in front of Georges Seurat's Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The painting consists of small points of color, a style called pointillism. In this painting, done in 1884, men, women and children are standing and lying down along a lakeside, women with their umbrellas, wearing corsets and covering their bodies from head to foot. Everything is proper, geometric, nothing out of place, like Cameron's life. In the middle of the scene stands a young infant, three or four years old with a pale washed-out face, looking straight at the viewer.

The scene in the movie cuts back and forth between Cameron's sorrowful face and the face of the child. Cameron recognizes aspects of his nature in that child's face. The unformed blank face suggests a tabula rasa life, a life unformed, a life unlived, like Cameron's, all potential but no action.

The music is especially haunting. It's by Tangerine Dream, and it's entitled Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want. Thanks go to mattress and another noder (/msg me if you were the one!) for pointing out that this was originally written by Morrissey of the Smiths, and can be found on their Louder than Bombs album.