Andrew McMurtryREVIEW: Life as a House (2001)
October 13th 2008 01:27
“Life as a House” is a really good movie. Remarkable scenery in an urban area, is recognisable from the beginning of the movie. The images portrayed in this film are stand alone; they don’t need words to explain them. “Life as a House” is a metaphor for life and building relationships. This is portrayed by the actual building of a house. It is simple filmmaking. All parts of the film show the changing nature of the relationship between George (the father, played by Kevin Kline) and Sam (the drug addicted teenage son, Hayden Christensen). The tearing down of the house is the tearing down of their relationship to its basic level, until there is nothing, no respect from Sam but not exactly resentment either. The building stages of the film lead both of them through the strengthening of their relationship until Sam begins to love his father.
The early scenes with the shack on a Cliffside with a beautiful view out over the ocean, which is out of place in a neighbourhood of huge, glorious houses which rich, affluent people live in. This is where George lives. It compares this house with the upper class home where Robin (Kristin Scott Thomas) and her second husband as well as Sam live. There are undertones of resentment and hostility between the family members, especially in the way Sam’s character is portrayed. The rebellious, glue sniffing nightmare that is Sam is forced to spend the summer with George and help him build a house after George finds out he has cancer and has only a few months to live.
Hayden Christensen’s Sam is a good portrayal of a bratty nightmare child. But after an inspiring speech from George, Sam starts to come around to better his own life. “You know the great thing, though, is that change can be so constant you don't even feel the difference until there is one. It can be so slow that you don't even notice that your life is better or worse, until it is. Or it can just blow you away; make you something different in an instant. It happened to me.” This is the beginning of the tearing down of the relationship before they rebuild their emotional relationship with a real house.
“Life as a House” also challenges perception. “Well, what you think you know doesn't necessarily have much to do with reality.” is an important quote in the movie. The quote is from Sam and foreshadows the future of the film in some ways. He says this to Alyssa (Jena Malone) in a shower scene yet is poignant for the rest of the film as well. He thinks he is building the house because his father has gone insane after losing his job, but the reality is that he wants his son to love him before he dies which is going to happen sooner rather than later.
The director, Irwin Winkler, tried to use light and darkness to express the different emotions used in a scene. Darkness is used to portray shame, as in the scene where Sam succumbs to Josh’s incessant nagging about prostituting himself, and light for everything else but in all scenes there is the ambient light, which is usually enough to light the feature on the scene. Most of the scenes in this moving are set at George or Robin’s house. This incorporates the construction of the relationship with the rest of the family, which is the subplot. The film does try to produce a sub plot between George and Robin when Robin comes to help George with the house and intensify’s after Robin’s husband walks out on her. There is also they use of montage montage with fast, hopeful string music to show the speed of their relationship strengthening.
“I always thought of myself as a house. I was always what I lived in. It didn't need to be big. It didn't even need to be beautiful. It just needed to be mine. I became what I was meant to be. I built myself a life. I built myself a house.” This quote sums up the movie. It sums up all the imagery and exactly what the film was trying to provoke. I enjoyed this film immensly. It had all of the things i enjoy in a movie; beautiful scenery, great acting, especially from Kevin Kline, and a good script. I would give this movie 3.5 out of 5 stars.
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