MY LIFE
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1993 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Michael Keaton, Nicole Kidman, Haing S. Ngor. Screenplay/Director: Bruce Joel Rubin.
It seems clear that Bruce Joel Rubin has a death fixation. Or more precisely, a life after death fixation. After the smash romantic thriller GHOST and the suspense mystery JACOB'S LADDER, Rubin had already staked his claim to status as Master of Metaphysical Melodrama. Now comes his feature directorial debut, MY LIFE, which again ventures into issues of life and death. The results are extremely mixed. When MY LIFE scores, it scores big; when it misses, it misses big.
MY LIFE opens with public relations man Bob Jones (Michael Keaton) beginning a very important project. Suffering from terminal cancer while his wife Gail (Nicole Kidman) is pregnant with their first child, Bob decides to make a series of videotapes so that his unborn child will know its father. However, as the project progresses, Bob realizes that he may not be the man he thinks he is. In fact, there are parts of his childhood he can't even remember. A visit to a Chinese faith healer (Haing S. Ngor) leads him to examine the unresolved issues of his past, including his stormy relationship with his parents (Michael Constantine, Rebecca Schull) and brother (Bradley Whitford). As he senses his time running out, Bob struggles to face his failings and disappointments, and to rediscover his life while he still has it.
To his credit, Rubin avoids the glycerine-soaked excesses that plagued GHOST. This isn't a big-screen version of a "disease of the week" TV-movie; it's a contemplative, almost spiritual story buoyed by the small but crucial role of the healer played by Haing S. Ngor. Ngor projects a serenity which permeates the film, the effect of his splendid scenes with Keaton lingering long after the scenes themself end. In fact, MY LIFE may be surprisingly over-subtle when it requires a moment of real catharsis. Too much of Bob's struggle is kept beneath the surface, and as a result I was left with a truckload of questions about who Bob Jones really was.
By far, the best thing about MY LIFE is Michael Keaton. Those who remember his impressive performance in CLEAN AND SOBER know that Keaton can be a fine dramatic actor when he has good material, and MY LIFE provides him with some fine moments. The best are those which play to his cocky comic sensibility. There is real charm to the scenes of Bob's videotaped instructions to his yet-to-be-born son on such vital issues as shaving, basketball and entering a room. When it comes to the more serious elements, Keaton doesn't have as much to work with. MY LIFE is supposed to be about a change in Bob Jones' life, but we don't get a clear enough picture of who he was before his illness to make it evident that there has been a change. Rubin ignores the basic dramatic rule of "show, don't tell" by having another character say that Bob "isn't exactly an example of an examined life." That's a quality I just don't feel I *saw*.
MY LIFE also caught me just as I had reached my breaking point in terms of tolerating saintly cinematic wives/girlfriends with no discernible personalities of their own. Nicole Kidman's Gail is a complete blank, spending far too much of the time radiating dangerously high levels of understanding. I was left completely untouched by the crucial love story because I never believed that there were two human beings involved. Instead, I saw one human being and one porcelain figurine with lots of hair. Kidman's one genuine moment, a very funny line in the middle of Gail's labor pains, was shocking because it was the first time Gail seemed to be made of flesh. The fact that it's Bob's story doesn't mean that Gail can't be well-written, and she is not.
In spite of my distaste for the love story, I was ready to be far more positive in my recommendation of MY LIFE until its final fifteen minutes. The conclusion is too drawn out, and Rubin inexplicably has Bob's big moment with his parents played out over the phone. After a solid opening, alternately entertaining and introspective, MY LIFE just peters out. Bruce Joel Rubin the auteur didn't have enough other people pushing him to flesh out his characters or fill in the holes in an otherwise affecting story.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 months to live: 6.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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