Even casual readers of this blog will have noticed that I am always bitching about how current movies have no dialog, poor pacing, poor texture, poor incidental acting, make clumsy use of music, use narration as a crutch, and so on and so forth. If I do reference films that don’t suffer from these flaws, they tend to be completely obscure indie films from the 1990s or “ancient” films from the 1970’s that nobody watches anymore. Last night my wife and I revisited a film that is an excellent example of transcendent film making done since the turn of the 21st century. I want to pause for a moment to appreciate My Life Without Me.

My Life Without Me is about a 23 year old woman with 2 kids living in a trailer in her mom’s back yard who is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and how she chooses to spend the last two months of her life. The highest praise I can give this film is to point out how rare it is that a film on a topic like this can manage to be completely uplifting, life-affirming and joyous, without manipulating the viewer, getting all stupidly philosophical,  or descending into “Terms of Endearment” smarminess. I’m frankly amazed at how wonderful you feel after watching this film.

Consider the dialog in My Life Without Me. It is not self-consciously trying to mimic “the way people really behave,” like modern dramas. Instead, it pleasingly communicates a tremendous amount of information about the characters, their histories, their emotions and motivations, and their relationships to each other. Yet it is still somehow completely believable, indeed, entrancing. It not all awkward pauses, stammering, and weird looks, as in our excessively literal modern films. My Life Without Me shows how much more effective great dialog is in capturing the human experience – there’s a reason we don’t call our everyday ineffectual interactions “art.”.

And the strong, well-written dialog sets up the performances, and what performances! Sarah Polley is just damn near perfect in the lead role. I can’t imagine that character being played any better than she did. To me, it’s one of the best acted roles I’ve ever seen. It is effortless acting, beautiful to behold. Her husband (Scott Speedman) is played with such tenderness and nuance I was amazed. With just his delivery of his lines, he manages to capture the husband’s innocence and childlike quality, his maturation process, exactly what kind of husband and dad he is, and even manages to capture the husband’s very subtle sense that something is not totally right with his wife, something he senses but can’t put his finger on. It’s incredible, given the smallness of the role. The acting of the family all together is something to behold.

Mark Rufallo is so wonderful as the lonely guy who Sarah Polley gets involved with, culminating with his incredible “I’m classically in love” speech, and the devastatingly beautiful scene that follows it. I’m tearing up just recalling it, that’s how beautiful it is. It’s absolutely heart-breaking.

Then there is the scene where she goes to see her father in prison. Alfred Molina, in a single scene as the father, gives a performance of such understated beauty. His body language and delivery throughout the scene, and the way he and Sarah Polley connect (and fail to connect) is just simply haunting. So simple, yet it tells so much. And of course the scene is set up with one of the more shockingly effective uses of music I’ve encountered: as she is finally making the trip to see him, we hear a chorus the Beach Boys song “God Only Knows” (the song she regularly sings to her husband,) but they use a version sung by a chorus of little children! I can’t really describe how incredibly this little bit of scoring sets up the emotion of the scene – it just has to be experienced.

I want to say a bit on narration. In general, I abhor narration beacuse most films use it as an excuse to not write dialog and rely on it as a giant crutch. But there are films where narration is very beautiful and effective, and I think this is when the narration is structured to contribute to the overall texture of the film. In My Life Without Me Sarah Polley’s narration is not about communicating facts to the viewer – these filmmakers are plenty skilled enough to build everything into the marvelous dialog. Rather, the narration lets us enter her emotional life in a very moving way, and helps define the tone and atmosphere of the film. And it helps that Sarah Polley is so good at narration. Not every actor can pull off narration, most can’t, in my book. But Sarah Polley is fabulous.

Then there is the way the death is handled. Again, it is near perfect, in my estimation. No blubbering, no “death rattle”, no manipulative swelling score of sad music. In fact, you don’t even see her die, which makes sense because the film is not really about death. Instead, we simply transition to views of what her life without her actually looks like, views of such simple beauty and poignancy they defy description. Is it really what happens or is it just the final vision of her life? It doesn’t really matter. The film is making a statement about life that transcends the story being told. Films like this are not made very often. If you haven’t seen My Life Without Me, I strongly encourage you to rent it and marvel at what just how great dramatic films can be when the filmmakers care enough to make them great.