Taglines: We’re all part of a greater story.
Life Itself is a generation-spanning story about love and loss that begins by following Will (Oscar Isaac) a screenwriter spiraling after his pregnant wife, Abby (Olivia Wilde), leaves him. His struggles affect his daughter Dylan (Olivia Cooke), who grows into a troubled young woman in New York City. Her life intertwines with that of Rodrigo (Alex Monner), a traumatized young man who grew up on an olive plantation in Spain. The decisions made by their ancestors ripple through the decades to bring them together.
Director and writer Dan Fogelman (“This Is Us”) examines the perils and rewards of everyday life in a multi-generational saga featuring an international ensemble including Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Antonio Banderas, Annette Bening, Olivia Cooke, Sergio Peris- Mencheta, Laia Costa, Alex Monner and Mandy Patinkin. Set in New York City and Carmona, Spain, Life Itself celebrates the human condition and all of its complications with humor, poignancy and love. The film follows multiple couples over numerous generations, and how they are all connected by a single event.
The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2018, and was released in the United States on September 21, 2018, by Amazon Studios. The film received largely negative reviews from critics, who called it “simultaneously overwrought and underwhelming”.
Chapter One – The Hero
The film starts with Samuel L. Jackson attempting to introduce us to the hero of our story. He first shows us a handsome gay man, Henry (Jake Robinson), as he is talking to his therapist, Dr. Cait Morris (Annette Bening). Sam is unimpressed with Henry’s story, so he moves the focus to Cait. Afterwards, Cait is walking down the street when Will Dempsey (Oscar Isaac) tells her he’s a big fan before she’s hit by a bus. Sam then breaks the narration and appears physically to suggest that since Cait is the hero that she’ll be fine… except for the blood pouring out of her head.
This all turns out to be part of an “unreliable Samuel L. Jackson narrator” script that Will is writing in real life, and another narrator continues the story from there. He goes to therapy to see Cait, where he’s been going since his wife Abby (Olivia Wilde) left him. Flashbacks show Will and Abby’s married life. She was a big Bob Dylan fan, and Abby is shown to be very pregnant before their marriage ended.
Will tells Cait about Abby’s history when asked to talk about her. Abby’s mother and father met at work (they were both elementary school teachers), and Abby lived with them for seven years until they died in a horrible car accident. She would go on to live with her Uncle Joe (Bryant Carroll), who was physically and sexually abusive toward her until she got a gun from a friend and threatened to kill him if he ever touched her again.
Abby found herself in college where she met Will, and he made the bold move to ask her out. Less than a year after they begin dating, and while at a Halloween Will asks Abby to marry him. Abby has some conditions, specifically about wanting a dog before kids, but she agrees to marry him. They later meet Will’s parents Irwin (Mandy Patinkin) and Linda (Jean Smart).
On another occasion, Abby goes to Will to talk about her school thesis paper, and she wants to make it on the unreliable narrator, and how life is the ultimate unreliable narrator because of how tricky and surprising it can be.
In the present day, Will wonders what went wrong with Abby. Cait tells Will that he was institutionalized following Abby leaving him, and asks him to tell her what happened “that day”. Will and Abby had just had lunch at his parents’ house. They were walking down the street when Abby told Will that they were having a girl, and that she wants to name her after Bob Dylan. Abby gets distracted by Will and is struck by a bus. Inside the bus, a little boy named Rodrigo Gonzalez (Adrian Marrero) watches. Abby died, but the baby survived. Will blames himself for what happened and kills himself in front of Cait.
Chapter Two – Dylan Dempsey
The narrator mentions Will and Abby’s daughter Dylan was born of death and tragedy, and these just seemed to follow her growing up. After being taken in by Irwin and Linda, Linda dies at when at age 6, and then her dog dies when she is 7. On her 21st birthday, Dylan (Olivia Cooke) is getting ready to go out. Her relationship with Irwin is a little more hostile, but she is shown to still care about him. She goes to a venue where her band gets ready to play.
After the show, Dylan is making out with one of her band mates. Another girl records them, and Dylan gets up to take her phone and stomp it on the ground. They two have a small fight before Dylan leaves the venue. Dylan sits down on a bench to smoke a joint. She dreams that she watches her mother’s final moment. Dylan wakes up crying with the bus in front of her. It appears that she sees Rodrigo on the bus asking her if she’s okay.
Chapter Three – The Gonzalez Family
In Spain, a man named Vincent Saccione (Antonio Banderas) owns a piece of land with several men at his employment. He brings in one man, Javier Gonzalez (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), for a drink. Saccione tells Javier a story of how his father was an Italian man who did not allow any Spanish being spoken in his home. He later impregnated Saccione’s mother and essentially shunned the two of them. After he died, Saccione took advantage of the fact that his father left no will, and so he took his father’s money and now owns the land. Saccione offers Javier a place to stay so that he may oversee some of the land. Javier agrees.
Javier goes to see his beloved girlfriend Isabel Diaz (Laia Costa), who works as a waitress. The two build a life with each other, eventually marrying and becoming parents to Rodrigo. Saccione starts to make secret visits to the Gonzalez home whenever Javier isn’t there. He presents Rodrigo with a globe, and the boy takes an interest in seeing New York. Saccione tells Isabel he feels it’s late in his life to find the happiness that Javier has, and he feels bad for intruding on their life, but Isabel assures Saccione that Rodrigo likes him. However, Javier disapproves of Saccione’s visits and gives him the globe back.
Javier then decides to take Isabel and Rodrigo to America to see New York City. Rodrigo has the time of his life, until they find themselves on the bus. Rodrigo talks to the bus driver, momentarily distracting him, causing him to hit Abby. Rodrigo watches the whole scene and becomes traumatized.
Back home, Javier and Isabel struggle to take care of Rodrigo since he can’t sleep. They invite Saccione to come back and help Rodrigo, and it works. Javier becomes envious of this, feeling that Isabel and Rodrigo love Saccione more than him. He confronts Saccione and asks if he loves them both, and he says yes, but he feels guilty about it. Javier makes the decision to leave, even though Isabel insists she loves the life she has with Javier. Isabel stays with Saccione, but she makes it clear she won’t love him the way she loves Javier.
Chapter Four – Rodrigo Gonzalez
Rodrigo (Alex Monner) grows up to go to school in New York. He starts a relationship with a girl named Shari, a rather vain and spoiled trust fund baby from a wealthy Long Island family who Rodrigo describes as “loud”. At one point, Rodrigo travels back home when Isabel gets sick with cancer. Rodrigo wants to come back and stay with his mother, but she tells him “Enough is enough”, and with that, they say goodbye.
The narrator takes us to what is the most important day in Rodrigo’s life. Shari tells Rodrigo that she’s pregnant. Rodrigo becomes worried, even as she continues going on about it casually to the point where she almost gets hit by a cab until Rodrigo pulls her out of the way, but she doesn’t notice and keeps talking. Shari then says it was just an April Fool’s prank, but Rodrigo, fed up with her shallow and immature behavior, breaks up with her right then and there.
Back in Spain, Isabel knows her time is running out. Javier then arrives for the first time in years. The narrator reveals that Javier asked Saccione to write letters to him to update him on Isabel and Rodrigo. Javier spends one final moment with his wife. Rodrigo goes back to his dorm room and gets a call from Saccione that Isabel has passed away. Distraught, Rodrigo goes for a run throughout the city. That’s when he comes across Dylan crying on the bench and asks her she’s okay.
Chapter Five – Elena Dempsey-Gonzalez
It is then revealed that the narrator is Elena (Lorenza Izzo), Dylan and Rodrigo’s daughter. She is reading from a book she wrote called, “Life Itself” which is the story of everything that led to her life up to this point. Elena tells the listeners the last thing that Isabel told Rodrigo, and we see her saying it in English. She tells her son that although life may bring us to our knees, if we look hard enough, we will find love.
Elena concludes her story by saying how one moment shaped her whole life, and that every bit of her has some of her mother, her father, and her grandmothers. The last is a brief clip of Will admiring a pregnant Abby.
Life Itself (2018)
Directed by: Dan Fogelman
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Mandy Patinkin, Olivia Cooke, Laia Costa, Annette Bening, Antonio Banderas, Isabel Durant, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Jean Smart, Lorenza Izzo,, Samuel L. Jackson
Screenplay by: Dan Fogelman
Production Design by: Gerald Sullivan
Cinematography by: Brett Pawlak
Film Editing by: Julie Monroe
Costume Design by: Melissa Toth
Set Decoration by: Monica Alberte, Ron von Blomberg
Art Direction by: Clara Gomez del Moral, Julia Heymans
Music by: Federico Jusid
MPAA Rating: R for language including sexual references, some violent images and brief drug use.
Distributed by: Amazon Studios (United States), Sony Pictures (International)
Release Date: September 21, 2018
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