Life Itself

By: Ashlee Dell

If you’ve missed crying at the screen while the show “This Is Us” is in between seasons, you’re in luck because the newest tearjerker is about to arrive in the form of Life Itself. The film, directed and written by Dan Fogelman – the creator of the NBC hit series – is a multi-generational tale with an all-star cast of Olivia Wilde, Oscar Isaac, Mandy Patinkin, Olivia Cooke, Annette Bening, Laia Costa and Antonio Banderas.  Life Itself has received some harsh reviews when it first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last week, even as far as receiving 0-star reviews. We decided to go into the film with open eyes and we found different results.

Life Itself is about life but more than just life. The premise is about a couple, Abby (Olivia Wilde) and Will (Oscar Isaac), who met when they were in college and seemingly break up in a segmented mystery spread throughout the first act. In Will’s point of view, he is at therapy seeking treatment after Abby “left” him and we learn of their love story as he reveals bits and bits of information to his therapist (Annette Bening). However, it is not all as it seems and is instead tragedy followed by tragedy, as Dan Fogelman knows best.

The script is about how life is based on the unreliable narrator, or “life itself” as Abby argues, and how one single event creates more events thereafter, especially after a death. The film is divided into four chapters, all of which explaining will not make sense without having seen the film. One huge issue the film had was the fact that immediately following the horrible situation of Will’s character, the next chapter abruptly begins thousands of miles away in Spain with the story of a rich man and his vineyard. However, as each chapter unfolds, we learn more and more about the upbringing of Abby and how her life was a tragedy and what followed was also a catastrophe. All I can say is that, being a fellow (new-ish) New Yorker, I can never look at the Washington Square West & 6th Ave the same ever again.

The two main stars of the film, Olivia Wilde and Oscar Isaac, really embrace their characters, but there could have been so much more explored in the script in Isaac’s performance of Will. It felt that it ended too abruptly with not being able to explore Will more. Although, that could have been by Fogelman’s design with the abrupt shift where Chapter 1 ends. Antonio Banderas’s performance is also great as a supporting character, with even so much as a twelve minute monologue in his native language of Spanish and is beautifully written and acted.

Despite the tragedy, Dan Fogelman’s screenplay and directing in Life Itself is wonderfully done and there will not be a dry eye in the theater by the conclusion of Chapter 1 alone. It seems as though Fogelman has concocted a film that merged his writing styles of that of “This Is Us” and Crazy Stupid Love (my favorite rom-com and arguably, according to me, one of the best of our generation) into a perfect blend. However ,there is way more tragedy and death than comedy by any spectrum in this movie. Nonetheless, Life Itself will make you rethink how we are affected by the bad events of our lives and the influence our past has on our future and generations of our future thereafter.