Light of My Life

At the beginning of Light of My Life - Casey Affleck is directing and also signs the script - a father and his little daughter lie in a scene in the middle of the night, where he tells her a fairytale before bedtime. He confuses the myths with his imagination and creates his own story from the beginning. It starts by saying that this is the story of a female fox. The fox and her mate are having a great adventure as they board on the Noah's ark. As the tale continues, the male fox comes to the forefront. The little girl reacts to his father by reminding him that this is the story of the female fox and not the male one ...

And that is how Affleck introduces us to his film, a post-apocalyptic drama, in which a pandemic disease has eradicated the female population on the planet, including the little girl's mother. Now, father and daughter are hiding in the woods, as the world is inhabited only by men, who pose a permanent threat to the girl, who dresses as a boy and behaves as one.

A threat however that is not apparent from the beginning. The pace of the film is so slow that it eventually catches you in, while for the most part, the two main characters is the only ones that appear on screen. The movie displays an incredible sensitivity (almost feminine) and a great potential for Casey Affleck behind the camera, which with its minimalist mood and beautiful dialogues, creates suspense and anxiety even when nothing is happening.

While the story is not pleasant and certainly does not claim originality laurels, it manages to be touching, realistically captures the moral complexity and weight of the father-daughter bond and at the same time their uncertain future and their striving for survival as literally all the world is against them. A key asset of the film is Anna Pniowsky's amazing performance that expresses harmoniously childlike innocence, curiosity, sensitivity, anger and empowerment.

As one can see at the end of the film, the tale was from the beginning about the story of the female fox: the hunted girl who must hide her true identity in order to survive and also for the humanity to survive. I don't know if Affleck was really one of the many perpetrators of the #metoo movement, but with his film he creates a hymn for the woman, the unbearable pain of her loss and her crucial role in the evolution of society.

The story is slow but builds up to quite a climactic ending. However, by the time I got to the ending, I was already thoroughly bored. I can't say I enjoyed it at all.

Another post-apocalyptic film. But a quite decent one. I appreciated the slow-moving story and the power of the storytelling. Many criticized how the father was so prepared and the daughter so unprepared. However, they seem to forget what puberty and adolescence usually mean; questioning everything and feeling out of control of one's emotions. It's been a long time since I saw the film The Road. This probably reminded me a lot of that film. It wasn't a new idea by any means, but I thought the film was quite well made. A little story in a new world order. Nothing groundbreaking, but a nice little story.

When an individual holds too much sway over the creation of a film, the end product almost always suffers. Tom Cruise, well-known for his tight control over the Mission Impossible franchise, micromanaged the 2017 remake of "The Mummy" to death. "Light of my Life" does not pretend to be a big-budget blockbuster, but its quality is undermined for a similar reason.

Casey Affleck is the director, writer, and lead actor in this film. When he wrote the many monologues for the father to sermonize, no one took him aside and advised him to cut their number and length. When he delivered the monologues, no one told him that he needed to make his stuttering monotone more lilting and engaging. And clearly no one informed Casey as director that beginning the movie with a 12-minute (truth!) recitation of a Noah's Ark derivative story would kill audience interest at the outset.

And that is the frustration I had throughout this movie. There were enough variations on the road trip theme that this could have been an enthralling movie. The father and daughter aren't merely trying to survive a post-apocalyptic environment. He needs to protect her from the real-life horrors that young women risk today, but on an astronomically larger scale.

The movie shines when it illustrates these risks and progresses the plot by driving them in their quest for the ultimate safe house. When the pair was forced to gauge the trustworthiness of new companions or they were fleeing from undesired ones, I was engaged and cheering them on. But active moments make up far too little of the film; if you watch the trailer, you've seen clips from most of them. Independent advisors would undoubtedly have counseled Affleck accordingly.

The movie also brushes past the details of both the epidemic and life after the epidemic. When the couple visited a government dispensary or the father mentioned how critical it was to have proper ID, I wanted to learn more about the world had morphed in response to the loss of half of its population. But no, the film doggedly returned to more rambling from the father as the two cower in a foxhole.

I watched the whole movie because I was interested enough in the ending, but I strung it out over 3 days to minimize the tedium. If you decide to see it, fast forward through the first 12 minutes. You'll thank me, I promise.

People who call this movie boring should go back to their Transformers movies. It's not boring for a single second. The story has a quiet intensity, the acting is out of this world, and Affleck's direction is so good that I can't wait for his next directing job. Haters gonna hate, but they are so wrong it's actually funny.