"Das Leben ist zu lang" is a German film from 2010 and one of the more recent filmmaking efforts by Swiss writer and director Dani Levy. It is a really short film as the closing credits roll in before the 80-minute mark already. The cast includes more than just a handful big names which shows that the name of Levy still draws crowds and famous actors to his projects. But should it really? I am tempted to say no because honestly looking at the quality, this film is a disappointment. The ways in which Levy keeps breaking the fourth wall are clumsy to say the least and the fact that the protagonist is a Jewish character adds nothing except hope by the makers probably that this will attract more audiences as religion always works with regard to that. So yes it was good that this was a short film because honestly it is embarrassing how much of a poor man's copycat this is down to the fact that they cast a Stuhlbarg lookalike for the main character (with an ounce of Paul Panzer). And even crucial plot points like the separation (and reasons behind it) as well as the potentially terminal disease part are almost stolen from the Coen's movie. Add to that Ferres playing the role of the affair (and for once the material is worse than her acting) and I genuinely question Levy's approach and honestly at least American films have the decency to credit the original work in contrast to this one we got here. And of course, it is also just a poor man's version of "A Serious Man" as every time the film tries to go for creativity and away from the American film's plot like the previously mentioned breaking of the 4th Wall, it almost fails completely. As a consequence the funny parts in this film are not even frequent enough for the minimal runtime. One would be the Ferch references. Overall, I find the idea here truly worrying and the execution shoddy. 4 stars out of 10 is still fairly generous. Don't watch.
Review of Life Is Too Long
