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Movie #7 - Life Itself


I procrastinated watching this movie because emotional manipulation isn't high on my list of things to do for a Tuesday evening. And Life Itself purports itself to be "sensitive" and "poignant" but really it's essentially misery porn, and I am not down for it. 

In short, it's a story with no realistic timeline, characters being needlessly killed as a means to develop the "plot," and all driving to a maudlin ending where we're supposed to feel like all the needless tragedy turns itself around because "things happen for a reason."

It's also punctuated by some of the worst writing I've ever come across in film, but that's besides the point as you're already so defeated by all of the "shocking" deaths and ridiculous coincidences that inevitably land the story in exactly the place where Fogelman wants it to be, and I don't understand if there's a point other than to be wholly and completely contrived. 

Here are the issues that I found with this film:

1. There is no escape from tragedy, not even good therapy or treatment if you LOVE SOMEONE SO MUCH. 
2. Women are chess pieces meant to be used to explore a man's emotional depth. Yawn.
3. The only way for women to deal with tragedy is to become "troubled."
4. Women don't care who they live with, they're totally fine when the men they love go off and abandon their families because they're left with some rich dude. 
5. Men are terrible parents because they simply LOVE TOO HARD.
6. No one actually knows what an English degree is, and I've never heard of a more ridiculous paper than "life itself is an unreliable narrator" with NO TEXT ASSOCIATED to it except a vague reference to "FRENCH POETRY?" WHAT THE EVER LOVING F? And this character trots off to graduate school, just like that, as IF.
7. In the middle of it all, there's Antonio Banderas giving a random dude a promotion because he picks olives "the right way." Short form for "this is a good guy, don't you know." only he's not because [spoiler] he totally abandons his family when the going gets tough. But, you know, he's got feelings so he's forgiven. #fuckofffogelman
8. Yes, tragic things happen to many people. Yes, tragedy makes for good art. But ALL OF THE TRAGEDY IN THE WORLD COULD NOT MAKE THIS GOOD ART. It's nonsensical. It's manipulation, it's some guy writing a screenplay where NO ONE THOUGHT TO GET AN EDITOR because..
9. The timeline MAKES NO SENSE. 
10. I'm not sure if there are enough eyerolls in the world to encompass how frustrating this was to watch. 

#ugh 

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