Film Review: Life Itself Is A Powerful Story With A Dividing Ending
SYNOPSIS: As a young New York couple goes from college romance to marriage and the birth of their first child, the unexpected twists of their journey create reverberations that echo over continents and through lifetimes in LIFE ITSELF.
Written and directed by This Is Us writer, Dan Fogelman, Life Itself is everything we love about the show. It is unabashedly aimed to make you cry and think about how human beings love each other. Like the NBC hit, it is sprinkled with nuggets of wisdom on themes such as grief, parenting, and how to be loving/let yourself be loved. Yet, Life Itself has one thing that will leave people torn: its ending.
Divided into 5 chapters, Life Itself is dedicated to connecting how various lives, and their choices, lead to people meeting in and falling out of love. Fogelman is a master character developer, and he does not fail in Life Itself. Every character you meet is so nuanced; even if they are on for a second you feel like you could know them for a lifetime. That is a special gift, and one that carries the entire film.
The cast of Life Itself is exceptional, especially because each one faces an immeasurable trauma. Life Itself is plagued with themes of death and grief to reveal something we never want to admit: loss is inevitable. You will LOSE someone you love, you will fail at something you love, and will go through moments where you do not love yourself. All said moments plague characters such as, Olivia Cooke’s Dylan Dempsey and Oscar isaac’s Will Dempsey.
Dylan and Will are gut-wrenching in how they move and breathe in emotional pain. Isaac mold Will to be, simultaneously, tragic and romantic. He as much an open heart as he is an open wound, and you will feel like you are watching the life of Jack if he lost Rebecca (This Is Us reference); with Olivia Wilde being his “Rebecca,” Abby. Wilde is gorgeous inside and out as she gives Abby a mixture of radiance and sullenness that helps you understand Will’s longing. Their love story marks the first two chapters with an almost unbearable sadness. It is clear that Fogelman writes stories that force characters to rise from emotional wreckages, which is why people might be more attracted to the beautiful, dynamic third chapter. The Gonzalez Family.
In the third chapter, we confront the complexity of a loving family that slowly disintegrates due to jealously, poverty, insecurity, and addiction. Unlike the Dempsey clan, we get to meet The Gonzalez family as they are happily forming in Andalusia, and they have a few good years of familial bliss. Yet, life loves to throw monkey wrenches at people’s banana clipped plans. Lorena Izzo is a diamond as the strong, noble character, Elena. Meanwhile Sergio Peris-Mencheta will make you want to shake him as the stern, stubborn Javier, and Alex Monner, as their son Rodrigo, is the perfect blend of both. As they all grow and separate, the narrator continues to be a guide; revealing their inner, truer thoughts as they watch life divided them. Yet, Antonio Banderas shines as Mr.Saccione; a character that moves in sentimental honesty and an elegant yearning to be loved. He is, by far, a favorite character of the film.
I state all the beauty of Life Itself because its ending might throw you off. It has so much to give in terms of its cast and its enlightening quotes on how our relationships with others become our eternity. For Fogelman, how we love someone determines how we live on beyond them and ourselves. After all, a good love story is never forgotten, which is what Fogelman wanted to give in his writing and the lush cinematography of the film. Yet, its ending is rough because it alters the logistics of the entire story, and some people truly are sticklers for time and math. The ending, though clearly meant to strike hearts, inadvertently cuts off some viewers who will not be able to handle the impossible time frame, or lack of, that Life Itself implies. To them, it makes the film’s brazened, sapped love an affront to their intelligence. Still, the movie gives so much beyond and before its ending that I think its heart is worth it. Life Itself Comes Out On September 21.
