The Life Before Her Eyes (2008)

Based on the novel by Laura Kasischke this powerful drama starring Uma Thurman unfolds in out-of-sequence flashbacks. Recklessly hedonistic teenager Diana (Evan Rachel Wood) and her best friend a Christian virgin (Eva Amuri) come face to face with a machine-gun-wielding classmate one morning at school in a situation reminiscent of Columbine. Thurman plays the grown-up version of Diana who has a perfect life in the same small town 15 years after the tragedy. On the anniversary of the shooting unpleasant flashbacks haunt her as she takes her daughter to school lectures on Gauguin to a bored art history class and possibly spots her older professor husband out with a younger woman. As the events cohere and time collapses one realizes nothing is certain and life renews and ends on a moment-by-moment basis. Under the helm of Vadim Perelman (HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG) a spiritual presence is imbued in lovingly photographed close-ups of flowers dirty dishes cats ants spiders bees on flowers leaves and Wood diving in and out of a swimming pool in slow motion. The dialogue is peppered with believably offhand philosophical inquiry and if the film does nothing else it makes one reevaluate one's perspective on the sanctity of every life decision--and to feel a degree of awe and reverence for the acting skills and beauty of both Thurman and Wood who meld believably into the same complex character.System Requirements:Running Time: 90 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/COMING OF AGE Rating: R UPC: 876964001380 Manufacturer No: 10138 Product Description

A Surreal Portrait . . .

The Life Before Her Eyes is a chilling portrait of a high school student gone mad, leaving devastation in his wake.

Evan Rachel Wood portrays Diana, a wild girl who relishes using bad language and meting out her own brand of justice, while her best friend Maureen, played by Eva Amurri, serves as the moral compass. While blithely enjoying their day, the two hole up in the school bathroom, chatting and fixing their makeup -- and then shots ring out.

From this point forward, the movie plays out in a series of flash-forward, flashback vignettes -- we see the two girls swimming, diving, hanging out; and then we see the adult version of Diana, taking her daughter Emma to school, glancing nervously at a sign over the local high school announcing a 15-year memorial of the tragedy -- a haunting day when a boy fired into a school, destroying lives.

Several versions of the teenage girls' final moments are played out, with the killer asking them to choose which one will die.

What seems like a normal life for the adult version of Diana soon has us asking several questions: Which girl actually died on that fateful day? What constitutes reality and what is actually fantasy? Is everything only a flashing of "life before her eyes" and is nothing real at all?

The viewer must decide the answers to these questions. But no matter what conclusions you reach, this movie will haunt you for some time to come.



September 22, 2008

many liberties taken with the book

SPOILER ALERT
It's always risky to watch a movie made from a book you liked, and I did like the book version of the story quite a bit...it was lyrical and dreamy and morally challenging. The film, for some reason, inserted a weird narrative about abortion, which was not part of the original story. It also made Maureen, the best friend, a Christian virgin. So of course the whole thing becomes a religious morality play, whereby the bad girl chooses to die to make up for the life she took. Yuck. The book had none of that nonsense. And in fact, the (anti-)heroine made quite a different choice in the book, which offered a completely different twist on the "choose life" thing--in the book the grown-up Diana sees a bumper sticker with that saying on it--the person who wrote the screenplay obviously noticed that and decided to make it more of a propaganda piece, instead of a morally ambiguous fable.
That said, the performances were good, and it may be that the whole story would have played better to someone who hadn't read (and liked) the original novel. September 13, 2008

Too confusing...I didnt enjoy the movie...but curiosity is there.

I havent read the book, but now I would like too. The movie was too confusing, I wasnt sure at first whether or not the main girl was a ghost or what. A customer at work explained it to me and then I understood. The girl did die and the whole movie was what she had envisioned in the two seconds before she died. I didnt really like the movie, I'm not an Uma Thurman fan at all, but I would like to read the book to see if it'll explain in greater detail. This movie rents really well, a lot of people are immensouly curious about it and have deemed it a "work of art". I found that you have to devote your entire attention to this movie, or you are really going to become lost like I did. So if you got alot of time to sit and think i would watch it, but if you have a short attention span and are easily confunded dont watch, you'll feel that you haave wasted your time. September 9, 2008

the kind of movie that stays with you

This movie was a struggle to watch at first--similar to the frustration I feel when I'm expected to read minds. It could be that I missed too many of the clues I could have caught if I weren't trying so hard to get it all at once. A friend and I did have fun with the lingering question marks we felt weren't so explicitly answered by the end of the movie. Admittedly, it took a second viewing and additional light from "cliff notes" audio commentary for me to fully appreciate the brilliant story telling of this film. In a way that is rich with imagery, and radiating with sincerity, the film reaches so deep into the soul... I had trouble "putting it down," and just moving on with the everyday routines of life. September 3, 2008

WHY DID I WATCH THIS WHOLE MOVIE?

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THESE OTHER PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT IN THEIR REVIEWS, MAYBE THEY ALL TOOK THE SAME PILL AND WATCHED IT TOGETHER...WHO KNOWS. LET ME PAINT THE PICTURE FOR YOU. IMAGINE A BEAUTIFUL VIBRANT FLOWER DESPERETLY PUSHING ITS WAY THROUGH A STEAMING PILE OF DOGGY DOOKIE, AND THERE YOU HAVE IT. THE MOVIE HAS ITS MOMENTS AND MAY EVEN KEEP YOUR INTEREST FOR A WHILE, WITH THAT IN MIND THE BEST THING YOU CAN DO IS TURN OFF THE MOVIE ABOUT FIFTEEN MINUTES PRIOR TO THE END CREDITS AND COME UP WITH YOUR OWN ENDING. DON'T GET ME WRONG I LOVE THE "ARTSY" MOVIES AS MUCH AS THE NEXT GUY, BUT COME ON. August 31, 2008

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