"Das Leben ist zu lang" is a German film from 2010 and one of the more recent filmmaking efforts by Swiss writer and director Dani Levy. It is a really short film as the closing credits roll in before the 80-minute mark already. The cast includes more than just a handful big names which shows that the name of Levy still draws crowds and famous actors to his projects. But should it really? I am tempted to say no because honestly looking at the quality, this film is a disappointment. The ways in which Levy keeps breaking the fourth wall are clumsy to say the least and the fact that the protagonist is a Jewish character adds nothing except hope by the makers probably that this will attract more audiences as religion always works with regard to that. So yes it was good that this was a short film because honestly it is embarrassing how much of a poor man's copycat this is down to the fact that they cast a Stuhlbarg lookalike for the main character (with an ounce of Paul Panzer). And even crucial plot points like the separation (and reasons behind it) as well as the potentially terminal disease part are almost stolen from the Coen's movie. Add to that Ferres playing the role of the affair (and for once the material is worse than her acting) and I genuinely question Levy's approach and honestly at least American films have the decency to credit the original work in contrast to this one we got here. And of course, it is also just a poor man's version of "A Serious Man" as every time the film tries to go for creativity and away from the American film's plot like the previously mentioned breaking of the 4th Wall, it almost fails completely. As a consequence the funny parts in this film are not even frequent enough for the minimal runtime. One would be the Ferch references. Overall, I find the idea here truly worrying and the execution shoddy. 4 stars out of 10 is still fairly generous. Don't watch.
3 Reviews
A Woody Allen mock up !!
Mr-Dalloway16 March 2011
this film tries to look serious when it is in fact totally incoherent i don't know i just did not have the feeling that this film is trying to say anything useful .. I think they were trying to make a film a la Woody Allen .. but as a superficial hypocrite would see a Woody Allen Film, someone who did not understand what it is all about but go on talking about how a great a work art that is just because everyone around says the same thing that is exactly what this film is all about .. it is trying to make a fine artwork of absolute nothing just horrible just gave 3 points for the artwork which also was not that fine
A smartly realized film within a film (within a film?)
kdkelly_337 August 2011
Alfi Seliger is having an existential crisis.
His family hates him, he's worried about cancer, he's shunned by his peers, his psychiatrist suggests that he kill himself and -- last but not least -- he's not sure if anything's real. Alfi, an on-the-rocks 50-something film director, has become convinced that he's living in somebody else's movie, that of Dani Levy, who actually is the director of this film -- and Alfi, his alter-ego -- in the brain-teasing "Life Is Too Long."
Part screwball comedy, part paranoid thriller, Levy's "Life Is Too Long" concerns Alfi's quest to film a movie about the death of humor, framing the story around the Mohammed caricature controversy. As Alfi says at one point while receiving an award, to hilariously droll effect, "Comedies aren't only made to make people happy." But this German film within a film (and, in one particularly absurd scene, a film within a film within a film) also stands as an homage to Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories" and Federico Fellini's "8½."
Markus Hering lights up the screen as Alfi, a bumbling, Mr. Magoo-type man-child sporting Gene Wilder hair, so at odds with himself, he can't distinguish the line between reality and the film he has been working on for years.
"Life Is Too Long" has many laugh-out-loud or cringe-worthy scenes, depending on your sense of humor, including a Michael Jackson death joke, a shocking gag in the league of Oedipus marrying Jocasta in the Greek myth, and -- my favorite -- one which finds Alfi's daughter photographing his colonoscopy with her cellphone.
Depending on your perspective when the credits roll, "Life Is Too Long" is either a film with a happy ending or a film that never ends.
His family hates him, he's worried about cancer, he's shunned by his peers, his psychiatrist suggests that he kill himself and -- last but not least -- he's not sure if anything's real. Alfi, an on-the-rocks 50-something film director, has become convinced that he's living in somebody else's movie, that of Dani Levy, who actually is the director of this film -- and Alfi, his alter-ego -- in the brain-teasing "Life Is Too Long."
Part screwball comedy, part paranoid thriller, Levy's "Life Is Too Long" concerns Alfi's quest to film a movie about the death of humor, framing the story around the Mohammed caricature controversy. As Alfi says at one point while receiving an award, to hilariously droll effect, "Comedies aren't only made to make people happy." But this German film within a film (and, in one particularly absurd scene, a film within a film within a film) also stands as an homage to Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories" and Federico Fellini's "8½."
Markus Hering lights up the screen as Alfi, a bumbling, Mr. Magoo-type man-child sporting Gene Wilder hair, so at odds with himself, he can't distinguish the line between reality and the film he has been working on for years.
"Life Is Too Long" has many laugh-out-loud or cringe-worthy scenes, depending on your sense of humor, including a Michael Jackson death joke, a shocking gag in the league of Oedipus marrying Jocasta in the Greek myth, and -- my favorite -- one which finds Alfi's daughter photographing his colonoscopy with her cellphone.
Depending on your perspective when the credits roll, "Life Is Too Long" is either a film with a happy ending or a film that never ends.
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