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The Life Before Her Eyes
An ending so stupid that even M. Night Shyamalan was laughing
The ending of a movie can either make it or break it and, in the case of The Life Before Her Eyes, the ending strangulates it, leaves it gasping for air, and then shoots it in the face with a rocket launcher. If I wanted to see a film with a surprise twist that was this terrible, I would have watched any of M. Night Shyamalan's movies outside of The Sixth Sense. I was certainly expecting more out of a Vadim Perelman movie as I had already seen his House of Sand and Fog, a great movie starring Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley that everyone should seek out. I am now going to attempt to find some sunshine among this shit cloud of a script, so bear with me.
There is some great stuff here, as in the performance from Evan Rachel Wood and a lot of the cinematography, which is gorgeous in most instances, but there is some bad stuff too, as in the preachy tone of the film (I don't need to be told that abortion is bad; I'm quite aware), the repetitive bathroom scene (for God's sake, how many times do I have to hear an emo kid saying "No, I'm only gonna kill one of you"?), and Uma Thurman's performance (she's not really trying). The one scene that stands out in my mind is a montage of what I'm going to call "ugliness" which really pierced me and was honestly the best thing in the entire movie. It's simply random shots of stuff like rotting fruit, messy bedrooms, and dead things, and it's great. And call me a pussy if you want, but I can think of two scenes at least that overwhelmed me with sadness (not the ending, obviously). One was the bathroom scene (the very first one). I'm always touched by films about school shootings, but there are better ones out there (Elephant, Bowling for Columbine, Empire Falls).
The sad thing is I sort of saw that final twist coming. I suppose that I was just hoping that I was wrong and that nothing that idiotic could ever be included in any movie, ever, but alas, it was. And it's a shame. It made an already immensely flawed movie much worse. I was going to pass this film but after pondering over it for a bit, I have come to the conclusion that I will never be watching it ever again and that I truly somewhat hated it, ladies and gentlemen. I prefer my movies to make a little more sense.
Note: I will reveal the ending of the film below for those people who may be interested.
Score: ![]()
1/2
***SPOILER ALERT*** About the ending: Basically, it is revealed that the Uma Thurman part of the movie was just Evan Rachel Wood's character's imagination of what her life would be like when she grew up. However, she does not grow up because we find out that she actually died in the bathroom after being shot. That's right, the whole "Uma Thurman" thing is not even real; it's make-believe. How utterly satisfying if you are utterly satisfied by utter shit. ***SPOILER ALERT END***
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