This poignant, understated film happened to be my choice for chill afternoon flick; I couldn’t have been more rewarded.
Upon reading various movie reviews, you may find words
like “sentimental”, “mopey”, or having a connection to the song “Eleanor Rigby”
(“All the lonely people…”); I believe these descriptions trivialize what
meaningful depths this movie plumbs in 1hr 32 min. While tears were shed (profusely
I might add), it was from more than mere sentiment. Anyone with a mind to the
meaning of life, the purpose of work, and the importance of what we leave
behind should add this to their “watchlist”.
The opening scene is of an old English
graveyard, setting the tone and theme. Clearly, even if “Life” is part of the
title, the notion of Death is going to be emphasized. What follows is a sequence of three funerals,
all of different faiths, with John May, our protagonist, being the only other
person present. Starting in, you get a sense of both the sad “stillness” and the
humorous bits of life that will resound throughout the movie. (Who can forget
the iconic pear peeling, the raw fish opened on the train or May's smiling at the girl's dog, who only stares back blankly?)
John May is a social worker, who leads a life similar to that of The Secret Life of
Walter Mitty. Each day John May wears the same muted clothes, goes to his excessively
tidy office, walks home to his sterile apartment, and daily eats a basic meal of canned
tuna and toast. The difference is, we see no “secret
life” dreamt of or hoped for.
And yet, we quickly see that he does have a life. He lives
for other people through his work. When people die alone in their homes, he is
the man who tries to find other family members or friends who might be able to
attend the funeral. But all too often, he finds, there are no contacts, or
those contacts choose not to remember that person in the light of celebration. We
begin to see what a big heart our protagonist has. Though his life itself is seemingly
stunted, he is the ultimate supporter of others who have truly lived. He collects
pictures of his clients in a scrapbook to memorialize and celebrate their lives—something
that no one else does for them.
It is only at the
end, when he meets the leading lady of the film, when he wakes up to his own
life desires and dreams. In the blip of time when out of work, his world gets
enlarged; he is literally broadening his horizons, as suggested by all the
train travel.
Just as we get our hopes up for our John May to take
charge of his life, making a Walter Mitty-like “recovery” and change, our hopes
get brutally frustrated. In an ending that can only be compared to the final
scene in LOST, we as viewers are hit with the remembrance of the fragility of
life and the short time we have to truly live. John May’s life lived for
others, while portrayed as romantic, and the right thing to do, is also shown
as still just his job. In the end, to many, his life would have seemed as empty
and as un-alive as his “clients.”
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John May was a “still life”; a one-dimensional reflection of/for the lives of
other men and women. But was his life no less worth celebrating? In the end, we see that no
matter who remembers or celebrates us during or at the end, what we do for
others will not be forgotten. And even a “still life” is still life.
