Director up to his old tricks
The man behind This Is Us brings family drama to the big screen
Dan Fogelman has been busy these past couple of years with This Is Us, his Emmy-nominated series that follows multiple characters across several timelines. So I guess the writer/director can be forgiven for doing what he knows best in Life Itself, which unfolds in four chapters and over many years, though without any distracting leaps in technology or fashion along the way.
The main characters, at least in Chapter 1, are Abby and Will, New Yorkers played by Olivia Wilde and Oscar Isaac. We see them falling in love and deciding to get married and start a family, but we also know from the opening moments of the movie that Will is a wreck because Abby has left him. Whatever terrible event caused them to break up is best left for audiences to discover.
In fact, there’s very little plot that can be revealed without spoiling some surprise. Suffice to say that Chapter 2 introduces Olivia Cooke as Dylan, the now-grown child of Abby and Will. Chapter 3 shifts to sunny Spain, where Javier (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) is foreman on an olive farm owned by Antonio Banderas. And Chapter 4 is all about Rodrigo (Alex Monner), Javier’s son. Trust Fogelman that everything will (eventually) fit together with a satisfying click.
Not that there aren’t some detours along the way. Never trust a movie that uses the term “unreliable narrator” more than six times. Samuel L. Jackson is the first example, apparently narrating the film until a firstreel
reveal indicates that he’s merely a character in Will’s unfinished “Untitled Samuel L. Jackson Unreliable Narrator” screenplay, written at the behest of his therapist (Annette Bening).
Some people don’t like having the rug pulled out this way — it can make you spill your popcorn — but I was pleasantly surprised at how Fogelman seemed to anticipate my criticisms.
“It’s like a movie,” says Will, moments after I thought the plot was getting a little too cinematically on-the-nose. Or “this is some deep philosophical s--t,” just about the time the dialogue seems to go over a cliff in its preciousness.
And there’s a nice bit where a lovely speech by Mandy Patinkin to his granddaughter is revealed to be not what he said at all, merely the ideal distillation of what he was feeling. Because how often do our words match what’s in our hearts?
But you’ve been warned: If this sounds like a film jerking its viewers around, then Life Itself may not be the story for you. But if you’re in the mood to be led
— to watch someone else doing a jigsaw, as it were — with some nice backing by Bob Dylan, a few sweet monologues and only one use of the horrid word “amazeballs” (and that to comic effect) then Life Itself should satisfy.
If it doesn’t, blame an unreliable narrator. There are many from which to choose.