It doesn’t happen every award season, but in some years a high-profile movie comes along that becomes a punching bag for critics who resent the marketplace dominance of slick Hollywood storytelling. This year, the unlucky victim is Life Itself, an ensemble melodrama written and directed by Dan Fogelman. Although most folks probably know Fogelman as the creator of the TV show This Is Us, he’s also a prolific feature writer, best known for Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011).

Looking at the critical reception of Life Itself, it’s obvious that some people were ready to pounce on Fogelman either because they resent his success in two media or because they find This Is Us too sentimental. Rolling Stone went so far as to headline its Life Itself review thusly: “We Have Now Seen the Worst Movie of 2018.” Really?

So what makes Life Itself such a point of contention? For one thing, the movie provides a philosophical framework for living in a world filled with disappointment and heartbreak. Anytime a filmmaker implies that he or she has figured out The Big Questions, that filmmaker is asking for trouble. Moreover, the style of the picture is guaranteed to alienate critics. The movie heavily employs metatextuality — storytelling about storytelling — and especially during the first act, Fogelman uses nearly every gimmick in the screenwriting repertoire. Similar to how music critics pounce on performers who forefront virtuosity whether or not they’re actually virtuosos, Fogelman risked a strikeout by taking a big swing.

That said, the movie cannot be dismissed by any responsible student of screenwriting because some of the difficult things that Fogelman tries work, and because his missteps are educational. It also bears mentioning that Life Itself is delivered by way of a powerhouse cast including Antonio Banderas, Annette Bening, Oscar Isaac, Mandy Patinkin, Jean Smart, two Olivias (Cooke and Wilde) and such intriguing newcomers as Laia Costa and Sergio Peris-Mencheta. As learning experiences go, one could do worse than investigating Life Itself because the movie is so full of stuff — big moments, evocative performances, funny lines — that every viewer is bound to find something to enjoy.

The manipulator

The two aspects of Life Itself that are most vulnerable to critical assault are the movie’s emotionalism and the contrived nature of Fogelman’s storytelling. From a craft perspective, however, it’s important to note that both veins of criticism spring from intellectual fallacies. First, the emotionalism. Detractors of Life Itself — and of tear-jerkers in general — often pillory the makers of such films for being “manipulative.” The worst thing these artists do, their critics say, is create loveable characters only to visit tragedy upon those characters in order to score cheap reactions. The fallacy here is that all storytellers are manipulators. The more useful question, therefore, is whether a particular storyteller played fair. Is the tragedy within the story purposeful? Alas, there’s no single correct answer to that question — for a viewer moved by Life Itself, the tragedy resonates, but for a viewer left cold by the picture, the tragedy rings hollow.

Critics also complain that Life Itself, like other films that withhold key facts from the audience in order to sucker-punch viewers with a big reveal, are “contrived.” But in the same way that all storytellers are manipulators, aren’t all stories contrivances? Once again, therefore, the question is one of fairness. In the case of Life Itself, is Fogelman’s tricky storytelling deep or shallow?

In terms of depth, Fogelman seems genuinely concerned with exploring difficulties plaguing the human condition — the old philosophical challenge of reconciling belief in the innate goodness of people with the hard fact that tragedy often befalls the most innocent among us. Life Itself seems to represent Fogelman’s sincere attempt at articulating coping mechanisms.

In terms of shallowness, however, Fogelman often seems to lack faith in his own messaging. All the razzle-dazzle gimmicks — the flashbacks within flashbacks, the unreliable-narrator trope, the long-game connections wherein an image from the beginning of the movie repeats until its significance pays off toward the end — distracts from the warmth of the characterizations.

Think of it this way: In musical circles, there’s an old axiom that the test of a popular song is whether it is as compelling when stripped down to a simple arrangement as it is when presented by way of a polished recording. (By way of example, the Beatles’ “Yesterday” hits just as hard without the strings). This principle, when applied to movies, explains why critics are quicker to embrace scrappy little indies than big-budget Hollywood releases — it takes real substance to wow an audience without gimmicks. Flip side, overreliance on gimmicks often signals a belief that the underlying artistic work cannot stand on its own.

There’s manipulative and there’s too manipulative, just as there’s contrived and too contrived. A persuasive case can be made that Life Itself errs in both ways.

Takeaway: Keep it simple

A story with a surprise

Another distinctive aspect of Life Itself is the way Fogelman repeatedly pays homage to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. One of that film’s stars, Samuel L. Jackson, makes an offbeat cameo in Life Itself and during one sequence, two characters cosplay as the hit men played in Pulp Fiction by Jackson and John Travolta. Yet the nods to Pulp Fiction run even deeper because the Russian-nesting-doll style of Life Itself mimics the unique way the narrative of Pulp Fiction unfolds. And then there’s the business of monologues.

Per Tarantino, the methodology involves a mysterious character giving a long speech, usually relating some peculiar and seemingly pointless tale, as a means of delivering a surprising revelation. In Life Itself, the best use of this trope happens when Banderas, playing the owner of a farm in Spain, speaks about his personal history while gradually but inexorably working his way toward the revelation of why he lives the way he does.

Banderas’ speech is among the few unquestionably great moments in Life Itself, even though it’s derivative (borrowing from Tarantino) and florid (another example of Fogelman’s overzealous scripting). The reasons this moment works are myriad. Setting aside the cinematic virtues (including Banderas’ lyrical performance), the story-within-the-story communicated through the speech is clear and honest and linear, meaning it lacks the frustrating gamesmanship found elsewhere in the picture. Moreover — and this is crucial — the monologue perfectly demonstrates the Tarantino technique; instead of simply embellishing something we already know (or, worse, repetitiously explicating a political argument), the speech creates and resolves an interesting mystery.

Takeaway: Seeding a secret into a monologue creates suspense

Rebuilding the wall

Although many respectable educators and professionals argue for a total embargo on breaking the fourth wall in cinema, such a position is as absurd as any other arbitrary absolute. Storytelling is fluid and intuitive and wild, so anything can work given the right context and execution. Still, those who consider metatextual storytelling a no-fly zone have at least one strong justification for their position: It’s awfully hard to rebuild the fourth wall after it’s been broken down.

The first act of Life Itself doesn’t just break down the fourth wall — it bulldozes the fourth wall, backs up the bulldozer to crush the rubble into dust, then clears the scene so it’s as if the fourth wall never existed. Everything about the first act of Life Itself reminds the reader/viewer that Life Itself is a movie. Yet Fogelman backs away from this methodology, at least somewhat, during the late second act, before returning to overtly metatextual techniques in the clunky third act. In other words, he destroys the illusion of reality, works hard to re-make that illusion, then lands in a place of awkwardly trying to do both of those things simultaneously. Points for trying, deductions for getting stuck in a web of overlapping stratagems.

From a craft perspective, it’s interesting to watch Fogelman flex his considerable skills. Beyond being a humanist with obvious gifts for connecting emotionally with audiences, he’s a clever writer capable of weaving together multiple narrative threads without losing clarity. But as the tired cliché goes, you can’t have it both ways — so Fogelman’s concurrent desires to create immersive emotional “reality” and to comment on the act of simulating reality are at best contradictory and at worst totally incompatible.

Takeaway: Beware of reminding the reader/viewer that your movie is a movie