Perhaps the most pleasant surprise of all 2018 movies was Dan Fogelman’s (Danny Collins) little-seen gutwrenching Life Itself. Not to be confused with the Roger Ebert documentary of the same name, this chapter-style movie is best viewed if you know as little about it as possible going in. I read this in the first paragraph of a review site I respect, and it was enough to get me to stop reading the review. I didn’t research anything more about it until I had finished watching the movie and was completely shocked to see that it had just a 13% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes (78% fresh with audiences based on 981 ratings at the time of this review). While the drama was thick and all of the tie-ins between the stories a little too coincidental and convenient to believe that all of the connections truly happened by chance, I was able to suspend that portion of the movie because A) I didn’t see everything coming ahead of time (naively perhaps) and B) because the raw emotions of this film felt so thick and real to me that I couldn’t help but be wrapped in the folds of each character.
The ONLY thing I knew about this movie going in was that Oscar Isaac was in it because I happened to see the movie poster on the review site that I skimmed. And, honestly, at the time of this review, on February 18, 2019, I’ll see anything that Isaac is in. He continues to create these absolutely memorable characters in incredible film after film after film. Check out Ex Machina, Operation Finale, A Most Violent Year, Inside Llewyn Davis, Drive, or At Eternity’s Gate to get a sampling. While maybe not a household name yet, he’s getting pretty darn close. And after watching his performance in Life Itself, I have to reconsider my Ten Favorite Actors list. If I compare his work over the last decade to someone like Russell Crowe, I don’t know how I can justify having Crowe on my list and Isaac off of it. It just doesn’t make sense anymore. Isaac was as good as he’s ever been before despite his limited screentime (not a spoiler…this film was shot in chapters, and each character had far less screentime than you would expect). Because I knew so little about this film going in, I actually thought I had either started watching the wrong movie or was completely misled by the single paragraph of the respected film review site that I saw. This movie starts much differently than I expected it to, and I was ready to throw in the towel after five minutes. Honestly, but it was a swerve…a complete misdirection to introduce the deepest of depressions experienced by Will (Isaac). On a side note related to this first five minutes, I realized I might be done with Samuel L. Jackson movies. I’ve kind of grown tired of his voice (all of those Capital One commercials that are shown frequently during sporting telecasts). He’s also in every other movie (kind of like Michael Shannon and Rober DeNiro) these days, and I’m tired of seeing him. But his presence in this movie served as the perfect deflect technique.
In a film full of stars, Will is given the platform to shine the brightest, and boy does Isaac jump on the opportunity. In Chapter 1, we get to meet Will in present-day New York City as well as in repeated flashbacks to sometime in that not-so-distant past (within the six months). Present-day Will is disheveled, has a greying scraggly beard, struggles with his day-to-day activities, takes coffee with multiple mini bottles of liquor and sides of Xanax, and regularly visits his psychiatrist Cait (Annette Bening – American Beauty, Bugsy). He’s been seeing her since his wife Abby (Olivia Wilde – Rush, Fox’s House.) The flashbacks show the happy as an extremely happy, loving couple. There is not a scene where Will doesn’t have a smile on his face. He and Abby listen to Bob Dylan, play with their dog, and talk about their upcoming pregnancy. Isaac’s portrayal of this character makes the love of any man’s love for his wife seem to pale compared to Will’s love of Abby. He is deeply committed to her, and Fogelman’s direction and editing of the past Will convey that wholly. If there is one day to describe flashback Will, it is joyful. But he’s been unable to cope with their breakup, wondering how it went so wrong on the day when she left him. He has spent months institutionalized after his breakup. However, his mix of medications convinces him that he and Abby are still together and having loving conversations. His meetings with Cait are not voluntary but are a required part of his program after he is released from the mental hospital. He has yet to meet their daughter and has no immediate plans to do so. Part of Cait’s job is to acclimate him back into a society where he is still not ready to be the dad his daughter deserves and reconnect with his loving parents (who he has also abandoned since).
Chapter 2 is about Dylan (Olivia Cooke – Ready Player One, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), the daughter of Will and Abby. Her life is full of tragedy. Raised mostly by her grandfather Irwin (Mandy Patinkin – Showtime’s Homeland, ABC Criminal Minds), we meet a saddened elementary school girl who experienced the death of some of those closest to her who is transformed into a rebellious, lost, and pissed off 21-year-old lead singer of a small band called PB&J who performs in front of crowds who are more interested in telling her to take off her shirt between songs than listening to what a song might be about. She throws a bottle into the crowd before stomping the cell phone of someone recording her making out one of her bandmates. She sucker punches another in the face. She’s an angry mess of a human being and has no one who can relate to her feelings.
Chapter 3 was my favorite in the film. Outside of Chapter 1, the acting in Chapter 3 is the best. And it is certainly the deepest and most thought-out chapter. In Spain, Javier Gonzalez (Sergio Peris-Mencheta – Resident Evil: Afterlife, Love Ranch) works the field of a large piece of land owned by Vincent (Antonio Banderas – Philadelphia, Assassins). Javier has worked for Vincent for years, but the two barely know each other. Javier is Vincent’s best worker and brings him into his home to tell him he wants to promote him to the foreman position. In this meeting (the longest single-shot scene in the film), we learn that Vincent earned his wealth when his bastard but highly successful businessman father failed to leave a will before his untimely death. As a result, Vincent inherited everything he had. So naturally, Vincent wants to be friends with Javier. Javier accepts the promotion, which includes a home on the land, but he tells Vincent that he does not wish to be friends with him in no uncertain terms. He is a committed man who wants his personal life to be completely separate from his professional one. It is an agreement that the subdued Vincent agrees to.
[As an aside, the chemistry between these two actors throughout their scenes is magnetic, enhanced even more through the dynamic of Laia Costa – Only You, television’s Devils). Peris-Mencheta and Costa were both new to me. Obviously, Banderas was not. This might be my favorite Banderas performance of all time. Despite his wealth and his seeming ability to get anything he wants through his wealth, he is an incredibly somber man. He is not angry or bitter. He doesn’t turn towards alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, or other negative outlets. He doesn’t have commitments that take him away from home. He simply sits in or around his large house, sipping wine, watching the activity around him. I was surprised to see an actor of Banderas’s ability in this role. By that I mean, you had Isaac and Wilde committed in Chapter 1. You were either in or out at that point. I don’t know if you needed another marquee name later in the film. But I’m SO glad that Fogelman cast him because he added such depth to this character…to this chapter…to this film. I hope that Banderas does more of these smaller, character-driven roles at this stage of his career because he still has a ton to offer, unlike so many other actors of his caliber and age who continue to show up in film after film after film, almost stealing paychecks].
Javier dates and marries Isabel Diaz (Costa), a waitress at a local restaurant. They have one son together. They have a perfect life, the life that Javier had always dreamed of. However, the isolated and lonely Vincent begins showing up at their home while Javier is at work. He clearly has feelings for Isabel and the son of Javier and Isabel. We soon learn of the tragic flaws of each of these characters after a vacation in which the son witnesses something that scars him so much that he needs counseling that the family cannot afford. Knowing that his son will not improve without professional help, Javier enlists Vincent to pay for the best therapist that they know of. Javier is not a man who likes to ask for help, and it is even harder to ask a man he knows has feelings for his wife. Peris-Mencheta brings so much life into Javier’s character that we don’t have to know what it might feel like to be wound up in so much pride that it hurts to have to ask for help. Instead, Peris-Mencheta brings those feelings into our laps. His portrayal of Javier is one that I could personally relate to in so many ways. And I’m not sure I’ve seen this particular tragic flaw ever displayed as eloquently in a film as Peris-Mencheta and Fogelman do with this character. It is both mesmerizing and heartbreaking. The work between actor and director, combined with the supporting performances of Banderas and Costa, is worth the viewing on its own. Chapter 3 could be its own film, much like Chapter 1 could be its own film. Both of these chapters will likely bring you close to tears if you truly let this movie penetrate your heart.
Chapter 4 is about a college-age Rodrigo returning to New York City to attend school. He’s a wicked smart kid who also excels at running and participates in track at his college. He begins dating a fellow coed in American named Shari (Isabel Durant – television’s Grace Academy). I’m not sure if they are ever in love, but they are in an infatuated deep-like. It doesn’t mean they were in a purely lustful relationship or a relationship before finding a true relationship with someone else. They liked each other even though they were very different from one another. There were a couple of odd scenes in this movie that I sort of understood. One involved Rodrigo and his mother, and the decision made between the two that I didn’t feel was the correct one or one that Rodrigo would agree to based on the young man we saw him raised into. The other involved Shari that momentarily turns Rodrigo’s life upside down. In about 30 minutes, he is forced to envisions a life that he wasn’t ready for but one that he could be stuck to only to be allowed to freely make a decision he did feel comfortable with. Let’s say it was a weight lifted off of his shoulder and completely understandable. Chapter 4 was the only one of the Chapters set in two locations. As mentioned, part was set in New York City, and part was set back in Spain. Also, the other Chapters primarily involved a single narrator (or lead character). Chapter 4 involved multiple leads. It was an affecting Chapter, but maybe not an overly effective one. It does involve closure that we didn’t have until this point and effectively leads us into Chapter 5, the shortest and weakest chapter in our story.
Chapter 5 is a quick wrap-up of the first four chapters and, honestly, is cheesy. But it needed an end. Hyperlink movies need something that can bring everything together. When they work, they are magic (Crash, Babel, Traffic), and when they won’t, they are laughable. The conclusion of Life Itself is somewhere in between, but nowhere close to the three I just mentioned, each of which was nominated for a Best Picture award, with Crash winning the ultimate prize in 2004. Life Itself is not there, but it’s not as far away as the 13% fresh critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes suggests. The first 5-10 minutes and the last 5-10 minutes of this movie are definitely its weakest.
And I mean, yes, there will be plenty who say that this movie is laced with tailor-made drama with a story that seems to know no ends with characters experiencing tragedy. And those who maybe don’t go through seemingly, infinite periods of sadness in their lives. But at the end of the day, yes, this is a hyperlink movie, and hyperlinked movies have many coincidences. That’s honestly their point. But this is a beautifully told story with some of the most real characters you’ll meet in the cinema in all of 2018. Oscar Isaac’s performance is worth the price of admission alone. His portrayal of Will is one in which he displays the highs and the lows that many actors only dream of. In fact, the back and forth between his manic and depression is so thick that you will be mesmerized by it but perhaps uncertain if you would be able to take the tolls with this character for an entire movie (not a spoiler, really…but no character is in this movie for more than two Chapters). To see the back and forth in real-time and flashbacks of a man so in love with life and so completely finished with that same life after a single incident is a work of art with the right actor. Isaac was (and continues to be) the right actor in everything he is cast in.
This movie is full of likable characters. While the (likely) manic-depressive Isaac leads the way, but not to be outdone, is Wilde’s Abby, who is equally in love with Will as he is with her. She has amazing plans for a family with him…a family that she never really had her whole life. But, like each character in this film, she experiences plenty of heartaches. My favorite characters were Javier, Isabel, grown Rodrigo, and even Vincent. With my first viewing, I felt like I could really relate with Javier (as stated in my paragraph above about Chapter 3). I felt he was the most likable and sympathetic character in this film. But I was wrong. My second viewing showed me the range of Costa and how she related to these three men in her life. She had deep, meaningful relationships with all three, including tense scenes where the audience could feel her truest pains. What was she so guilty of that made her forced to live a lesser life than she wanted to win? Because she was beautiful? Because she was lovable? Because she won the hearts of two men when she wanted the heart of only one? Isaac’s Will was the best performance, but Costa’s Isabel was my favorite. She loved her husband and wanted to help her son. She had no idea of the consequences it would have. She did the right thing and paid a steep price…a price she didn’t deserve. But her resolve through the end had you rooting for her in a way that you wouldn’t have imagined for a character who was seen more like a minor one and wasn’t really introduced until the movie was near the halfway point.
I understand why critics didn’t love this movie, but audiences did. Fogelman created a dire movie that he tried to wrap up in the end as being “Life Itself.” There was enough to test the perseverance of our speaker in Chapter 5, but not a lot of evidence that said that this was “Life Itself.” Instead, there were numerous heavy stories designed to make us sad and dreary. But for a moviegoer and a writer who thrives on that sort of thing, it worked perfectly for me. Good enough to be in my Top 10 Movies of 2018? Not quite. In a year that had several good movies, but not really a single great one (sorry, A Star Is Born, Green Book, Widows…but each of your films had its share of flaws that knocked it from great to very good), Life Itself fell in the latter group of good movies. But it still wasn’t Top 10. I don’t recommend this movie for everyone, but if this review intrigues you, I do think you’ll get something from this movie. It’s one of those movies that you’ll remember intently for a week or so before it falls in the wayside. At the time of this March 7th review, Life Itself was the first movie that I have watched from 2018 more than once. That’s because I wanted too long to review and wanted to give it its full due, but I also wanted to watch it again.
Plot 7.5/10
Character Development 9/10
Character Chemistry 9/10
Acting 10/10
Screenplay 8.5/10
Directing 7.5/10
Cinematography 9.5/10
Sound 10/10 (beautiful Bob Dylan served as the soundtrack of this film, but there was plenty of other songs to define the time period and also a moving, yet sad score)
Hook and Reel 9.5/10 (once you get past the annoying first five minutes and meet the Oscar Isaac character, you’ll be in for a movie that’s hard to turn away from)
Universal Relevance 8/10
87.5%