‘Fear is like a giant fog. It sits on your brain and blocks everything…’
Albert Brooks is one of those cinematic figures who has pretty much passed me by. I know of him only through his performance in This is 40 and as the voice of Hank Scorpio in one of the greatest episodes of The Simpsons. Defending Your Life, written, directed and starring Brooks, is my first taste of the man as a movie star, and I have to say, I enjoyed it…
Daniel Miller (Brooks) is an ad executive in LA until he dies in a car accident on his 39th birthday. He then finds himself in Judgement City, a kind of non-religious afterlife where Miller has to argue before a selection of bureaucrats that he is ready to move on to the next phase of existence. While waiting for his judgement, Daniel meets and falls in love with Julia (Meryl Streep) and the two strike up a powerful relationship. Rip Torn plays Daniel’s bombastic defence attorney and Lee Grant plays the formidable prosecutor trying to banish Daniel back to earth through reincarnation.
I will begin by saying that while Brooks is a likeable and amiable onscreen presence, Defending Your Life is never really laugh-out-loud funny. It made me smile throughout but it never really made me guffaw. In fact, this is a surprisingly sweet and tender film, even sombre at times, something that made me long for a time when high-concept films such as this one could be treated as serious cinema and not just something throwaway. Streep, always reliable, has a blast playing a character who is layered and nuanced but also light and funny. There is a genuine chemistry here, mainly because Brooks seems to be able to make Streep genuinely laugh, which is quite lovely to behold.
Defending Your Life is a solid, competent film rather than an instant classic, but it’s also a perfectly pleasant way to spend 111 minutes and it serves as an appropriate introduction to Brooks and his many talents.
