Starring: Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Olivia Cooke, Antonio Banderas, Mandy Patinkin, Samuel L. Jackson, Annette Bening, Laia Costa
OUR RATING: ★★½
Story:
Romantic drama directed and written by Dan Fogelman in which the story centers on a couple, Will and Abby (Oscar Isaac and Olivia Wilde), that lead a multi-generational love story spanning both decades and continents, from the streets of New York to the Spanish countryside, and are all connected by a single event.
Our Favorite Quote:
'Life brings you to your knees. It brings you lower than you think you can go. But if you stand back up and move forward, if you go just a little farther, you will always find love.' - Isabel Díaz (Life Itself) Share on X
Best Quotes (Total Quotes: 13)
[jokingly referring to Abby’s heavily pregnant stomach]
Will: Are you pregnant?
[Abby laughs]
Will: What’s going on here?
Abby: Surprise!
Abby: You ever going to ask me out, Will?
Will: I’m just waiting for the right moment.
Abby: That’s good to know. Alright. I’ll see you around.
[Abby gets up to walk off]
Will: Abby, I’m waiting for the right moment because when I ask you out, there’s not going to be any turning back for me. I’m not going to date anybody else for the rest of my life, I’m not going to love anybody else for the rest of my life. I’m not going to really care about anything else for the rest of my life. I’m waiting for the right moment, Abby, because when I ask you out, it’s going to be the most important moment of my life, and I just want to make sure that I get it right.
Will: Marry me. Seriously, let’s get married.
Abby: [laughs] We’ve been dating less than a year.
Will: Yeah, I know, and I feel like I’ve shown incredible restraint waiting this long. Say yes. You want to say yes.
Abby: No, I don’t.
Will: You want to say yes so bad it hurts.
Abby: You’re cocky.
Will: I’m right. Say yes. Say yes. Or I swear to God, if you don’t say yes, I will shoot this nimrod on general principle.
Abby: [laughs] Stop it.
Will: Please say, “Yes, I’ll marry you,” or I’ll fucking shoot myself…
Abby: Stop! Will!
Will: Say, “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
Abby: Stop!
Will: Sorry. That was weird.
Abby: I love you. You’re the love of my life, I’m sure of it. But sometimes it scares me how much you feel. You know? It’s not something I ever thought I would be scared of, but I may not be equipped to be loved this much.
Will: I’ll find another way.
Abby: No.
Will: I’ll find another way. Hey. I will. I will love you however you’re best equipped to handle it, Abby. I will love you on odd days of the week. Baby, I will spend the rest of my life making your life better,
not worse.
Linda: Abby, don’t take this the wrong way.
Will: Oh, here it comes.
Abby: Yep.
Linda: But, selfishly speaking, I’m just so glad your parents are dead.
[Abby chuckles]
Will: And boom.
Linda: Oh, stop it. Abby knows what I mean.
Will: Really, yeah? She does? You do?
Abby: She’s going to explain.
Linda: What I mean is, all I ever wanted was for Will to marry a woman with dead parents, so I wouldn’t have to share the grandchildren, and, and he did. I mean, my prayer came true.
Will: Jesus Christ, Mom!
Linda: It’s okay! She knows what I mean.
Will: It’s so strange to think about, how a completely random moment involving peanut butter, that happened way before I was born, would shape my entire life.
Dr. Cait Morris: Are you glad it happened?
Will: Ah, well, Dr. Morris, that is the big question. Isn’t it? Because if it hadn’t happened, Abby’s parents would never have met. They’d never have married, they’d never have honeymooned in Aruba where they conceived Abby. They’d never have seen her come into the world without a peep. They’d never have watched her blonde hair turn brown as she got older. They’d never have watched her become obsessed with dancing and then soccer, and then horses and, of course, Christmas. Always Christmas. The lights, the gifts, and above all, the Rockettes. So obsessed with the Rockettes was Abby that every year, every single year, her parents would have to drive her into town to watch the Rockettes perform. Every single year, except that one year, Abby’s parents died instantly. Abby was trapped in the backseat of the car with them for over an hour before they got her out. Her father, her father was decapitated by the steering column. I know, right? That’s the detail that always gets everybody. I mean, the story in and of itself is tragic of course, but when you give someone that image, that singular image of a seven year-old girl trapped in the backseat of a car with her decapitated father, well, then it really just lands, doesn’t it?
[referring to young Abby shooting her uncle]
Will: It’s like a movie, right? I always pictured a young Natalie Portman playing her.
Dr. Cait Morris: I don’t know who that is.
Will: You don’t know who Natalie Portman is?
Dr. Cait Morris: No.
Will: Doc, you got to get out more.
Dr. Cait Morris: Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.
Will: I’ll tell you what, one of these nights, we’ll do like a marathon of early Portman. Beautiful Girls, The Professional. You’ll see what I’m talking about. Okay?
Dr. Cait Morris: Okay.
Will: Right. Okay, well, uh, well, things got better from there. Obviously, damage had been done. Decapitated father, a molesting uncle, you don’t just like bounce back from that shit, but Abby was smart, determined, a dreamer, a reader. She hunkered down, she got herself into college, started seeing a therapist on campus who truly changed her life. She even made a very close friend.
Dr. Cait Morris: Will, we’ve been seeing each other for a while now. And today, you’re talking about Abby a lot for the first time. And it’s good. It’s really good. So, tell me about that day. You had a nice morning with Abby…
Will: No, no.
Dr. Cait Morris: …talking about Bob Dylan.
Will: I didn’t. I didn’t. That’s not what I fucking said. I just said that it may not have been a nice morning.
Dr. Cait Morris: Okay.
Will: I said that it could’ve been a smothering, horrible morning.
Dr. Cait Morris: Okay. It could’ve been a smothering, horrible morning. You talked about Bob Dylan, then you went over to your parents’ house for lunch, and then what happened?
Will: Then she just left me. Then she just left me.
Dr. Cait Morris: Will, she didn’t just leave you. She just left. Yes, she did.
Will: Have you seen Abby since you’ve been released, Will?
[we see Will sitting at a restaurant table crying]
Will: Come back to me, Abby. Please come back to me. I’ll, I’ll do anything.
Dr. Cait Morris: Will?
Will: Just give me another chance.
Dr. Cait Morris: Will?
Will: I’m talking to my fucking wife!
Dr. Cait Morris: But your wife wasn’t there, was she?
Will: I don’t know. What am I doing?
Dr. Cait Morris: What are you doing? Will, you’re not well yet. Okay? You’re mixing meds. You’re, you’re not yourself.
Young Dylan: I crave a happy life, Grandpa. I have a almost desperate craving for stability and happiness, the way fat people crave chocolate, or lost hikers crave rescue. I want to live a big great fantastical life, but I’m concerned that the tragedy that seems to follow me, the tragedy that birthed me will prevent that from ever happening. And I don’t know if I can withstand another body blow like this.
[in Spanish]
Javier González: I will take care of your land. I will help it thrive as if it’s my own. But my whistling is for me, and my big mouth is for the men.
[reading from her college thesis]
Abby: “Life itself tricks us. It misleads us. It paints one man a hero when he may well be a villain. Hero or villain. Villain or hero. Or maybe neither. Maybe life is playing the role of unreliable trickster yet again. Maybe those it paints as the heroes and villains of our stories are actually just day players in a much bigger movie. Maybe they’re simply extras, filling the frames so the real heroes can have bodies
crossing in the background.” And then it sort of says that over and over again.
Will: You are so much smarter than me.
Abby: I really am, aren’t I?
Elena Dempsey-González: My father, Rodrigo González, officially met my mother, Dylan Dempsey, that day, the most important day of his life. They would not spend a single night apart for the next forty-two years. They would go on to have four children, seven grandchildren. A love story for the ages. My grandmother, Abby Dempsey, argued in her failed college thesis that life itself is our most unreliable narrator. She argued that no one knows where their story is going, nor who the heroes in it are going to be. And while it’s true that life has often made it difficult to pinpoint the heroes of my family’s story, my parents have always made it incredibly easy for me. They found the one populist love song in our family’s often very melancholy album. Unlike my grandmother Abby, my grandmother Isabel was neither a writer nor a philosopher. But sometimes I wonder if she didn’t understand exactly what Bob Dylan was going for.
Isabel Díaz: Listen to me. Rigo, you have had many ups and downs in your life. Too many. And you will have more. This is life. And this is what it does. Life brings you to your knees. It brings you lower than you think you can go. But if you stand back up and move forward, if you go just a little farther, you will always find love. I found love in you. And my life, my story, it will continue after I’m gone. Because you are my story. You are your father’s story. Your uncle’s. Rigo, my body fails me, but you are me. So you go now, give me a beautiful life. The most beautiful life ever. Yeah? And if life brings us to our knees, you stand us back up. You get up and go farther, and find us the love. Will you do that?
Elena Dempsey-González: I’m not sure whose story I have been telling. I’m not sure if it is mine, or if it’s some character’s I have yet to meet. I’m not sure of anything. All I know is that, at any moment, life will surprise me. It will bring me to my knees, and when it does, I will remind myself, I will remind myself that I am my father. And I am my father’s father. I am my mother. And I am my mother’s mother. And while it may be easy to wallow in the tragedies that shape our lives, and while it’s natural to focus on those unspeakable moments that bring us to our knees, we must remind ourselves that if we get up, if we take the story a little bit farther…
[speaks Spanish]
Elena Dempsey-González: If we go far enough, there’s love.
Total Quotes: 13
What do you think of Life Itself quotes? Let us know what you think in the comments below as we’d love to know.
Trailers:
lisa says
What did young Dylan say to Fuckface when he was dying?
alex says
She said, “Tell them I’m nice.”
Faye says
Its a beautiful movie. Makes you think deep and question life. I cant believe people gave negative critics?? Its one of the best movie I’ve ever seen. Salut
Mary says
I would like to say that I thought the movie was very heart felt. It had so much meaning to me and I am sure to many. I loved the quotes so much that I have written them down for my son along with other quotes that have meant something to me sincerely so when it is my turn to leave this place of life these quotes can be something he can hold on to through out life. Thank you for sharing your beautiful story. I wish there was more movies like these.
Anonymous says
Agree wholeheartedly. A gorgeous film. Cried all the way through it.