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Defending Your Life is a 1991 romantic comedy/fantasy movie about the afterlife. The film was written, directed by and stars Albert Brooks. It was filmed entirely in and around Los Angeles, California. Despite its comedic overtones, Defending Your Life contains elements of drama, valor, and surprising sensitivity.
Plot Despite the premise of its plot being the human afterlife, the film addresses religion only very glancingly and is not at all preachy. Brooks plays Daniel Miller, a man who dies in a car accident and is sent to the afterlife. He arrives in a place called Judgement City, apparently a wait station or a kind of purgatory, which is populated by the recently deceased of the western half of the United States, where he is put "on trial for being afraid." As it is gigglingly explained to Miller, people from Earth use so little of their brains (3-5%), that they spend most of their lives dealing with their fears. ("When you use more than 5% of your brain, you don't want to be on Earth anymore," explains Bob Diamond, Miller's defense attorney.) If the court determines he has conquered his fears he will be sent on to the next phase of existence where he will be able to use more of his brain, and thus be able to experience more of what the universe has to offer. Otherwise, his soul will return to Earth (again) to live another life in another attempt at moving past fear and in the process advance up the universe's proverbial food chain. At the end of each life, the life is judged, in a postmodern version of the Christian Bible's account of Saint Peter. The trial, presided over by two judges (Lillian Lehman and George D. Wallace), utilizes testimony in the form of video footage from certain points in the defendant's life, showing parts of his childhood, teenage years, and adulthood, each used to illustrate an unconquered fear or as an example of a conquered fear. There is a wrench thrown in the process, however, in that both the defence and prosecution attourneys are familiar with every detail of the defendant's life, down to each individual second. So, while Miller has a defender, he's basically on his own to defend himself against accusations of fear from various times in his life continually pressed upon him by the prosecutor, and to agree with or corroborate notions put forward by the defense attorney. Miller's wisecracking defense lawyer is played by Rip Torn, and the prosecutor is played with acid-tongued gusto by Lee Grant. During a break in the trial (each of which lasts for an hour or two over the course of three days), he meets and falls in love with Julia (Meryl Streep), a woman who lived a seemingly perfect life compared to his. Shirley MacLaine, known for her beliefs about reincarnation, has a cameo appearance as herself, acting as the holographic host of the "Past Lives Pavilion," seemingly a sort of amusement park attraction where a person is able to see a few of their previous incarnations on Earth. Miller is shown as an African tribesman in the process of being chased by a predator; Julia was a medieval warrior; a middle-aged woman was a Japanese sumo wrestler; an old man was a little girl playing with a doll; etc. Video releases Defending Your Life was released on VHS and Laserdisc in early 1992. Both of these editions have since gone out of print. Warner Bros. Home Video released a DVD on April 3, 2001, in a cardboard snap case. It features 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen formatting, and subtitles in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, there are no extras on the DVD. See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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