Life Itself (2018)

Directed by: Dan Fogelman | 118 minutes | drama, romance | Actors: Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Annette Bening, Mandy Patinkin, Jean Smart, Olivia Cooke, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Antonio Banderas, Laia Costa, Àlex Monner, Isabel Durant, Lorenza Izzo, Samuel L. Jackson, Jake Robinson, Adrian Marrero Kya Kruse, Charlie Thurston, Gabby Bryan, Jordana Rose, Caitlin Carmichael, Bryant Carroll

Samuel L. Jackson in a cameo? Annette Bening being brutally hit by a bus? An inverted narrative structure? The pair of Oscar Isaac/Olivia Wilde in a kind of Pulp Fiction? The bizarre events at the beginning of ‘Life Itself’ cause confusion. Irritation too, and it doesn’t produce much more than misunderstanding. Dan Fogelman (“Danny Collins”) begins this well-cast, “heartwarming drama” with a sort of reference point without structure. It comes when heavily bearded Will (Isaac) discusses the loss of the love of his life Abby (Wilde) with a psychiatrist (Bening), who in turn died early in the film.

This will be clarified later. It doesn’t get any easier, though: Patient Will talks about Abby’s childhood, which mashes up the stew some more. The patient and psychiatrist then literally walk around in the flashbacks, which is nice for the viewer, thinks Fogelman. Soon we hop back to the present, or what must pass before that. The love story of Will and Abby, who says that ‘life itself is the only reliable narrator, but unreliable in itself’. Now the undersigned has sometimes read the back cover of a book and has now reached a blessed age, but this is beyond his cap.

The good cast is going to overact, although Wilde and Laia Costa (‘Victoria’) do their best. Isaac (‘Inside Llewyn Davis’) doesn’t believe in this film, which he has to leave after 40 minutes to make room for more flashbacks – now called Chapter 2. Sorry for the spoiler, but a totally unexpected suicide attempt for the viewer, with Bob Dylan’s ‘To make you feel my love’ as background music, that’s too much for someone who grew up with James Last. We get to hear the song in three versions, including a punk version. Then Antonio Banderas starts speaking Spanish and we end up in a kind of ‘Babel’. It is too much. Catastrophe needs no invitation.