Enora Maurer

United States
Director: Dan Fogelman
Starring: Oscar Isaac (Will), Olivia Wilde (Abby), Mandy Patinkin (Irwin), Olivia Cooke (Dylan), Laia Costa (Isabel), Anette Bening (Dr. Cait Morris), Antonio Banderas (Vincent), Sergio Peris-Mencheta (Javier), Alex Monner (Rodrigo)
Genre: Drama, romance
Running time: 117 minutes

A “happy ending” movie to start my cinema year, was what I thought, as this was actually the first movie I saw in 2019. Given its presentation, also in the trailer, one could think the movie to be a good way to start the new year. After all, many of us start the new year with good resolutions, thinking about the past year, what was good in it and what bad and what we can do to improve it.

In this sense, Life Itself somewhat crashes those new year’s resolutions, as it makes you realize that life is not in your hands. Many things happen – awful things – that are out of our control. Of course this is the way life works on many levels, and in this respect the movie stays true to “life itself”, but the compulsory happy ending seems forced to me, and rather unrealistic. Of course, this is a movie, and many happy endings are unrealistic, especially in rom-coms, but I feel like the whole movie was rather focusing on the negative parts of life and just randomly, in the last 7 minutes or so, made a “happy ending”-movie out of it.

In fact, Life Itself did not uplift me, at all. I’m also not entirely sure if it was meant to be uplifting, but the “happy ending” certainly seems to put it in that direction. I think i would have liked the movie better without the „happy ending“, as it seemed a little preachy to me and in my opinion took some of the significance of the rest of the movie away.

That said, I did enjoy some of the conversations and thoughts during the main parts of the movie, about life, love and hurting. But again, i felt that some of those thought’s significance was taken away due to the mode of transmission (therapy sessions), which made it diffficult to know what really happened. Another thing i liked is the fact that three stories were told separately, one of which in Spanish, which I especially enjoyed, as it added an entire different aspect to the movie and also contributed to the depth of this part, and made it more realistic.

To conclude, I was entertained for the most part of the movie and I enjoyed the different story lines, so I still think it was worth watching. Even though the „happy ending“ was a little random, I can still take away some of the relatable reflections made in the main story lines, also with regards to potential „new year’s resolutions“. As for the happy ending, I will just ignore it, as we all have to live towards our own (happy or other) ending anyway.