My Life Without Me
2003 106 minutes. Rated R.
My Life Without Me – Sony Picture Classics
“This is you. Eyes closed, out in the rain. You never thought you’d be doing something like this, you never saw yourself as, I don’t know how you’d describe it… like one of those people who like looking up at the moon, who spend hours gazing at the waves or the sunset or… I guess you know the kind of people I’m talking about. Maybe you don’t. Anyway, you kind of like being like this, fighting the cold, feeling the water seep through your shirt and getting through your skin. And the feel of the ground growing soft beneath your feet. And the smell. And the sound of the rain hitting the leaves. All the things they talked about in the books you haven’t read. This is you, who would have guessed it? You.”
From its opening scene, My Life Without Me, directed by Isabel Coixet and based on Nanci Kincaid’s story, Pretending the Bed, presents sensations felt by the main character Ann (Sarah Polley) who is coming to terms with the recent news of her terminal cancer diagnosis.
Rain, a worm weaving around her foot, more rain, imaginative dancing of all those surrounding her in a grocery store while she shops in slow-mo, and a simultaneous voice-over during all of these scenes, depict Ann’s new self-awareness following her diagnosis.
Many people experience life as something that just happens to them, not as something they have control over. For Ann, getting pregnant at seventeen, marrying the first man she ever kissed (Scott Speedman), and then giving birth two years after, is the path she has followed. With her somewhat estranged father in prison, her misanthropic mother (Deborah Harry) living in her backyard, her trailer park life could be more of a living hell than it is, yet she has a loving husband, strong bond with her young children, and stability. However, everything is tipped upside down when she becomes sick (yup, ovarian cancer).
Immediately Ann is proactive about her bucket list: record (very difficult to watch) birthday messages to her daughters for every year until their 18th birthday, get to the beach with her family, go visit her dad in prison, make love with a man other than her husband, figure out what to do with her nails and hair.
Peripheral characters, including a Milli-Vanilli obsessed hairdresser (hilarious) who is fixated on putting Ann’s hair in braids like her own, and a food and diet-obsessed (recently dumped and depressed) co-worker friend (Amanda Plummer), are cleverly original. Both characters bring humor and lightness to the story, which Ann herself needs as she works through her feelings.
The lover (Mark Ruffalo) Ann takes has recently been left by a woman. Lee lives in an apartment sans furniture and paint on the walls, using books (and he has lots) as chairs for he and Ann after the two meet at the laundromat. Lonely (and lovely as always), Ruffalo’s Lee is enamored with Ann, wanting to take her away from her world of trailers. Heck, he even wants to help her husband find a good job! I expectantly waited for the moment when Ann would share her terrible news with Lee, but it never came. From the onset, Ann feigns anemia, and is determined to keep her illness a secret.
One of my favorite dynamics is the rapport between Ann and her doctor. When revealing her terminal illness, the Nosferatu-looking Dr. Thompson (Julian Richings) refuses, or is plain incapable, of looking her in the eyes. Ann, in her dry manner, makes a flippant remark about this and then the awkwardness changes, and a kind of personal, communicative doctor/patient relationship follows.
Ann asks Dr. Thompson to hang on to some audio recordings she prepares for everyone she loves, and asks him to distribute them accordingly when she passes. Figuring it is the least he can do, he obliges, but only if she agrees to weekly meds help ease her pain. He also gives her ginger-flavored candy after she tells him she likes it. A huge bag of it in fact, most likely because he has no idea what else he can do to soothe her, but at least he tries.
This is the type of screenplay I would have liked to write. It’s an emotional, thoughtful drama, but it has dark humor and layered characters-no one seems one-dimensional. Ann is introspective and funny. She is relatable, and I felt that a lot of her feelings were ones I would identify with, or have at some point in my life. The dialogue is believable and realistic, and I like how it portrayed awkwardness between people (male doctor to young dying woman; married woman to lover; incarcerated father to estranged daughter).
It was sad, believable sad, meaning not gratuitous. Ann’s refusal to share with anyone the truth about her illness, and her reliance on audio recordings to relay it could have been sappy, but it was poignant and heart wrenching, owing to Polley’s incredible acting sense. Her face can register every emotion without speaking a word. The music matched the melancholy sentiment in the movie. Instrumentals, some piano, and Brian Wilson (God Only Knows).
I also think the cancer theme with regard to young people (also thinking of 50/50, which was well done, too) is one that can come off as self-indulgent, if not written well. I didn’t feel blind pity for Ann, which was good. I, at times, found her selfish and sort of annoying for not ‘fessing up to what was happening to her. I understood her reticence but felt frustrated at her decision to feel she needed to act so selflessly and man-it-up alone. Although, as a woman, who hasn’t thought of keeping a hypothetical illness or pregnancy a secret, and “handling it” silently.
I definitely saw myself in this character, even though I don’t know if I could have gone through the whole ordeal in secret. Ann’s secrets belong to her and they open something in her that allows her to feel things and live her life freely in a way she has never done.
That said, I think what Ann was doing was not simply an act of martyrdom, it was a thoughtful reflection on her part to make her illness hers and hers alone and make decisions in her life that were hers and hers alone for the first time ever. Once again, Ms. Polley brings her perceptive and raw acting style to a subtle yet memorable indie film.
