Life Itself (2018)
Director: Dan Fogelman
Watched: 9/4/19
Rating: 4/5
“… And What a Life It Is”
Call me a sucker,
you can say I fell for it-
cameos, fake-outs,
fancy camera angles,
clever editing,
nonlinear narrative,
cross-cutting, meta-
walking through your own flashbacks!
Though there was too much
Bob Dylan, Tarantino
waxing poetic,
it had a stellar soundtrack,
visually pleasing.
Spanning three generations
and two continents,
it’s epic in scale but still
touches close to home.
You’ll either love or hate it;
a dividing film
without room for middle ground.
Brims with emotion,
peppered with meaningful quotes.
Life’s a b*tch, it’s true-
random, tragic, surprising,
“brings you to your knees…
but you will always find love.”
Critics hated it,
thought they were trying too hard,
called it “gimmicky”,
“morbid”, “manipulative”,
“sadistic”, “contrived”,
“worst”, “weirdly patriarchal”,
“performative schmaltz”,
and “attention-deficit”.
Sure there’s some truth there;
self-indulgent filmmaking-
that can’t be denied,
but that’s quite captious and harsh.
It’s official then:
I’ve been manipulated-
seduced by all the
slick narrative trickery,
sold on the meet-cutes,
fell for all the characters.
Despise soap operas,
but I empathized with them,
smiled, laughed, and cried.
Maybe because my life’s been
more tragic than most,
the plots didn’t seem that wild,
forced, or overwrought.
Usually a stickler for
continuity,
surprised to say didn’t mind
having to practice
suspension of disbelief-
hopeless romantic in me?