Life As a House

2001

Director: Irwin Winkler

Distributor: New Line Cinema / Warner Brothers

Key Elements: Story – Lines – Characters – Message

My Review:

I love this movie.

It’s a difficult thing to tell a story that acknowledges all the filth of life without just leaving us in the midst of it. This movie has teenage sex, homosexual prostitution, drug use, cross-generational promiscuity, lies and hatred. And then there’s the main character’s terminal illness.

But as the story develops, we see a fractured family come together. It’s rocky. It’s difficult. It’s heartbreaking. But just as the old house is torn down and a new one built, old hurts are mended and love is rekindled.

And the tone of the movie is perfect. Light-hearted but grounded in reality. My favorite scene is when they dance to Joni Mitchell in the house frame at sunset. Gorgeous.

The Gospel is also in this movie. Ironically George’s death is the force that restores the family and gives everyone a new start at life. Likewise, Jesus’ death was the force that set us free from the filth of our lives, and gave us new life.

And that life is being built by God daily – like a house.

Tailer:



Quotes:

• Build this house with me.
• Well, I'll apologize for everything but today! Today I give a shit!
• Sometimes things happen for a reason. Something bad to force something good.
• Sam, if you were a house, you would want to be built on a rock over-looking the sea.
  Hindsight. It's like foresight without a future.
• You're the most beautiful woman I have ever known. …Not just physically. Even you anger's perfect.
• Do I still Love you? Absolutely. There is not a doubt in my mind. Through all my mind, my ego... I was always faithful in my Love for you. That I made you doubt it, That is the great mistake of a Life full of mistakes.
• Well, what you think you know doesn't necessarily have much to do with reality. I mean I hope I'm not the first one to tell you this.
• No, Sam, I wasn't trying to get you to like me. I was trying to get you to love me.
  - Well, congratulations, you fucking pulled it off!
• 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.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.

Stills: