zamp52 Review of Life is All You Get

Life is All You Get (1997)

Like a bottle of wine, this movie gets better with age.

[9/10 · 12 April 2011]

"Life is a construction site" huh? Well, first of all that title held absolutely no meaning to me whatsoever. Even now I must admit that I still do not fully comprehend such a strange movie title. I saw the parallels between the title and the renovation of Berlin and of course the ever ongoing dilemmas that the characters seemed (for some masochistic reason) to repeatedly place themselves into. In the beginning of the film I found myself completely turned off by the characters. I quickly lost any feelings of sympathy that I first experienced when I witnessed what a terrible life the lead character was slowly being suffocated by. Not only was he irresponsible and in through my eyes just plain weird (I mean who would leave their father's corpse to rot while they went out on a date, seriously?) but most of his suffering seemed to be self-inflicted. He had to have know how bad Vera was for him and his already deteriorating life. His first encounter with her landed him and jail and an incredibly hefty fine. I think that I first realized how little value Jan placed on his life when he didn't even bother to speak up and defend himself in court. He at least wasn't guilty of shoplifting or rioting the rioting charges that were surely placed upon him but he just accepted his punishment without even so much as a bat of an eyelash. Again, who does this? Jan obviously had very little desire for happiness or stability and Vera only served to pull him even further down into his abyss... in the beginning anyways. There were small pockets of the movie that teased us just with an inkling of hope, of potential happiness. The first scene of the movie that I remember Jan smiling was while running from the police with Vera. Even though he didn't know her he defended and left with her and he did it with passion and a smile. Who in their right mind would do this? The moments spent between Jan and his niece also offered some redemption from the ever enclosing darkness that continued to move towards Jan. Something about their relationship seemed off though, like they would be wrong if viewed from a different perspective. Perhaps it was the childlike nature of Jan or the elevated maturity level of his niece but at times it almost seemed as if they were in a relationship. This dirty feeling left me feeling anxious whenever they were alone together. When she crawled in bed with him and he placed his arm around her in a very spoon like position I had to turn away from the film for a moment. The entire scene just felt wrong which of course fit perfectly with most of the other off putting scenes in the film. And the ending? I haven't been this upset over a film's ending since Die Weisse Band. Nothing I felt was fully resolved, I had no answers to the multitude of questions that the film dumped on me like yesterday's trash. BUT with all of this said, with all of the dingy, tainted moments that the filmed possessed and kept shoveling off the screen onto us there was always this very, very, very faint glimmer of hope. I found myself latching onto to this small ray in the darkness like a breath of fresh air while I was slowly drowning in a sea of sludge. After I walked away from the film I swore to never, ever watch this again. Over the last week however my mind has slowly changed. I began to feel like there was more truth here than I first realized. Jan's cluttered life and severe depression in some ways reminded me of my own life and how I have just up and walked away from my problems (never from a decaying corpse though!) to try and eke out some sort of distraction from life. Good or bad distractions, it didn't matter. As long as I had some sort of consistency, as long as I could still chase that one ray of hope in the darkness then almost magically I could find the strength to keep moving, to fight of the worst of evils: stagnancy and apathy. And this is truly what I believe Jan was doing throughout the film; he trying to keep moving. As soon as we stop moving we die and just by making his choices (even though most of them were terrible) Jan was telling us that he wanted to be happy, that he wanted to live. I suppose in a construction site if you stand still you will inevitably be run over by a piece of machinery or some heavy object will fall and crush you so you have to keep moving, keep building, even if your foundation isn't as secure as some others. Now I think I understand why it's called "Life is a construction site".