I can almost imagine being in the room where this film was pitched. "You know how 'Forrest Gump' was about a man traipsing through the world and touching many different lives in the process?" "Sure." "What if Forrest Gump was a dollar bill?" Well, maybe I'm being a bit facetious. The premise isn't misleading, but 'A life lived' doesn't especially center the 2.5 by 6" strip of paper; it's just vaguely in the background. What the movie becomes in the process is kind of a "day in the life" of a city, giving us snapshots of the various sundry comings and goings, trials and tribulations, joys and heartbreaks of people who for even a moment are in possession of the bill. This opens the door to many possibilities of what tone the picture might adopt, and storytelling possibilities therein; why, it could even be an anthology film after a sort. What we get is interesting in concept, and has its moments, but I'm not sure that it's anything one needs to go out of their way to see.
A host of themes, ideas, real-life sociopolitical issues, moods, and characters fill these 78 minutes (75, if you take away studio logos and end credits), all of which are terrific fuel for a possible narrative. In the broad strokes, on paper, there's endless potential. In the details of the actual dialogue, characterizations, scene writing, and loose plot, the final product is a little less than stellar, not least as none of the fuel is necessarily given sufficient time or ignition to really make anything of itself. We flit from character to character, scene to scene, notion to notion, without any one receiving more particular attention than another, so 'A life lived' becomes a melting pot in which nothing has more than only partly softened. As if to emphasize the point, right around the halfway mark we get a scene that tries to be extra cheeky and smart as two characters discuss the exact ethos that this film is trying to adopt with its lack of a singular protagonist. In so doing, it is accentuated that filmmaker Riley Wood and co-writers Kevin Kerry and Kevin Brown have aimed to model their project after 2004's 'Crash,' or 2015's 'Anesthesia,' titles with ensemble casts and lives that intersect to one degree or another. It is also accentuated, however, that the ethos Wood's film is trying to adopt, and the model it aims to emulate, just aren't being brought to totally meaningful fruition in this instance.
I appreciate Wood's editing, and Chris Brown's cinematography. I think the crew behind the scenes did a fine job all around with details like costume design, hair and makeup, and so on. Austin Creek's music is enjoyable, if not entirely remarkable. Wood seems a capable director, technically speaking, though I'm less convinced when it comes to orchestrating scenes and guiding his cast. For that matter, I don't know if it's Wood as director, or the actors he has assembled, but performances range widely from weak and inauthentic, to blithely suitable, to nicely nuanced, to tawdrily overdone, and such inconsistency definitely places an upper limit on one's engagement. Then, just as the movie does gradually swing back to tales it touched upon earlier, we return to the question of the writing. There are ideas and story beats that should carry immense emotional weight, and earnest, significant impact. For the relative brevity with which each element is broached, however - though mindfully, for sure - it feels like we're only getting a fraction of what 'A life lived' is trying to communicate. On top of that, some of the threads that manifest over the length aren't provided any resolution, and they're just left hanging in the air.
I see what 'A life lived' tries to do and be. I think it works in part. Whether the issue was lack of resources or a lack of imagination, however, what the film needed was more focus on the Bigger Ideas underlying some of the material, time devoted to each thread more equal than it already is, and resolution for those threads that just don't have any as it is. Maybe this never had a chance at being perfect, but it could have been better than it is. At length the picture is modestly enjoyable, and not a bad way to spend some time on a quiet day, but it's also just not anything that one needs to go out of their way to see. Come across it in passing? Sure, go for it. Let's just leave it at that.
