Review: Life Itself — When Narrative Ambition Undermines Emotional Engagement

Life Itself sets out to tell a sweeping, multi-generational story about love, loss, and the invisible threads that bind lives across time and geography. Its intentions are earnest, and its ambition is evident. Unfortunately, the execution collapses under the weight of its own structural miscalculations.

The film opens with a compelling emotional core. The first chapter, centered on Abby and Will, establishes genuine intimacy and tragedy. The second chapter, following their surviving daughter, extends that grief in a way that feels both earned and grounded. At this point, the viewer is emotionally invested and anticipates continued narrative momentum.

That momentum is abruptly derailed in Chapter Three.

The introduction of the boyfriend character—retroactively linked to the mother’s death years earlier—relies on coincidence rather than causality. What is meant to feel fated instead feels contrived. The reveal arrives without sufficient narrative groundwork, asking the viewer to accept its significance rather than experience it.

This issue is compounded by the film’s decision to pause its central storyline in order to present an extended Spanish-language subplot involving the boyfriend’s family, particularly his ailing mother. This material is clearly intended to be emotionally resonant. However, for non-Spanish-speaking viewers, the arc unfolds with minimal contextual grounding or narrative scaffolding. We are shown that something important is happening—but not why it should matter to us yet.

Subtitles are not the problem. The problem is that the film asks viewers to process an entire emotional backstory before they understand its relevance. Rather than enriching character, the sequence creates distance. Instead of drawing the audience deeper into the story, it temporarily excludes them from it.

At roughly sixty minutes into a two-hour film, Life Itself asks viewers to abandon the characters they have just begun to care about and emotionally invest in a parallel narrative—in another country, in another language—with only the promise of future payoff as justification. That is a significant narrative demand, and one the film has not yet earned the right to make.

The result is disengagement rather than curiosity. The story no longer pulls the viewer forward; it asks them to wait. For many, that is where the connection breaks.

Ultimately, Life Itself mistakes complexity for depth and coincidence for meaning. Its reach exceeds its grasp—not because its themes are unworthy, but because its structure undermines its emotional economy. A film so concerned with the fragility of connection might have benefited from showing greater care in maintaining one with its audience.

Life Itself is an ambitious but undisciplined film that sacrifices emotional engagement in pursuit of grand design.

Director:
Dan Fogelman

Cast:
Oscar Isaac (Will Dempsey)
Olivia Wilde (Abby Dempsey)
Olivia Cooke (Dylan Dempsey)
Annette Benning ( Dr. Cait Morris)
Antonio Banderas (Vincent Saccione)