Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Light of My Life Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 11, 2019

With Light of My Life, Writer/Director Casey Affleck has constructed a thoroughly convincing portrait of a dystopian world decimated by death and distrust, defined by dreariness and decay, a directionless world of despair and disrepair. His vision of a drastically altered landscape is not set against a backdrop of zombies or ruined cities but rather within the beating hearts of a father (Affleck) and his daughter (Anna Pniowsky). It's a tale of survival in the aftermath of an unexplained die-off. Survival means maintaining a semblance of the status quo under the challenges of a new normal. The father teaches his daughter morals and ethics, they regularly practice spelling difficult words, but education now encompasses the processes of surviving in a world of limited means and dangerous unknowns: filtering water, planning routes of escape, and treating others as probable enemies rather than potential friends. The movie is reflective rather than kinetic, slowly constructed but rewardingly paced, carefully executed and hypnotically real in its representation of a radically altered yet fundamentally recognizable world.

The world has changed since then, since the world's females -- including the protagonist's wife -- died from a mysterious illness that arrived quickly, worked rapidly, and left without mercy. The man's daughter, whom he calls "Rag," mysteriously survived. The world changed when Rag was very little. It's been some years since then and Rag has grown into a capable and intelligent girl, but a girl nonetheless where few, if any, like her remain. Dad disguises her as a boy. As a girl in the eyes of the world, she'd be a curiosity at best, a target at worst amongst a vagabond and often dangerous and deadly male population. Her hair is kept short, she wears masculine clothes, and goes by the name Alex. Dad teaches her to survive. She's capable, but he worries. That's what dads do. They live in a state of perpetual watchfulness and readiness, a life where settling down means never settling in. Most anything fun or loud or attention-drawing or -seeking is strictly off-limits. People are to be treated suspiciously and avoided at all costs. Little remains but memories within a shell of what once was, but as Rag approaches the age when her true identity will no longer be concealed, the stakes only grow higher, the dangers more real, and distrust all the more key to survival.

Rag is savvy in the only world she has really ever known. She is smart as a whip, more than capable of remembering what she needs to remember. But she’s still a kid, and a girl, at heart. She rebels, as it is, not for anger or spite but for age and genetics and instincts. She does not rebel in a way to compromise her and her father’s safety. She doesn’t always listen, but when the chips are down, when the moment comes, her own attuned survival instincts kick in, too. And she seems to have a sixth sense about these things. She grew up in the world and knows not the ways of how things once were, no different past to cloud her mind in the present. Paranoia is her father’s lot in life. She’s more balanced. Her father knows her capabilities but struggles with the fear that she will be revealed for who she is. He wants to protect her. Both rightfully so. But she knows reality and is capable of processing it. “It’s OK,” she says, when her father urges her not to look too closely, or for too long, at two rotted corpses. “Let me go,” she says, literally and metaphorically, at a key moment in the movie when her father must drop her out of a window and down to safety. The movie does not play up themes of her budding maturity. Rather, they are carefully folded in by way of stories the father tells the daughter and in key moments when she faces difficult challenges of the physical and emotional varieties.

Critical and complex story elements are shared through casual conversation and shaped through matter-of-fact experiences. Affleck does not turn the movie into action fodder or amplify dramatic content. He plays the movie with a quiet, reflective reservedness. Shots linger, framing is carefully considered, and the story is allowed to unfold in time through attuned perspectives that filter from the external to the internal, and vice versa. Characters are established within their world, and Affleck does not pander to the audience to make the world any more accessible or to change it from a deliberate vision for audience comfort. The movie finds its tension and tone in its reality, a reality carefully built not of the fantastic but of grounded consequences and believable responses to the once quickly changed but now long established landscape. Affleck builds incredible intensity even in simple dialogue exchanges with strangers through a closed door or simply hearing voices or seeing movement at distance.

Light of My Life Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Light of My Life's 1080p transfer is very efficient and true to the movie's deliberate visual stylings. Noise is readily evident in low light, right out of the gate in the extended nighttime tent interior dialogue scene. The movie is largely low light and dreary in visual tone, so expect a fair amount of noise throughout, albeit never to any scene-breaking density. Textural efficiency is high. Though the image is bleak and inhospitable, there is no shortage of impressive clarity and attention to detail to be found on faces, the well worn clothes, dusty and unkempt home furnishings, and all variety of natural terrain. The picture's overall sharpness is very impressive and in the most forgiving light there's a very high level of visual robustness on hand. Colors as noted are dull and deliberately so. There's a gray cast to much of the movie. It's nowhere near as hopelessly bleak as The Road, but don't expect anything resembling bold, brilliant colors. Still, natural greens fare well, clothes and warm faces are likewise true to the overall cast, and white snow is crisp and brilliant. Black levels are deep but don't overpower fine object, low light detail. This appears to be a very true, accurate, and well-rounded Blu-ray presentation from Paramount.

Light of My Life Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Light of My Life is not a movie with an intense soundtrack. Sound design is subtle, reserved, and there's not much happening in terms of raucous, high volume, prominent sound elements. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack works with the inherently subtle sonic cues. Many of the track's best moments are simple atmospherics. The track opens up with incredibly rich and well defined examples thereof. Gently falling rain subtly pelts the stage. Rolling thunder presents with balanced depth and distance. Woodland ambience seamlessly draws the listener into the movie's damp and dense and largely quiet locales. Some more intense gusts of wind occasionally work their way into the track. Small things like creaking floorboards and knocks on doors represent some of the more obvious sounds in the film, and with the picture's focus on dramatic content rather than action-first spectacle, the engineering efficiency and lifelike placement and detail are vital to build the tension, and the DTS track never lets the listener down. Dialogue is the primary sound mover. It is as clear and well prioritized as one would expect.

Light of My Life Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Light of My Life contains no supplemental content. No DVD copy is included. The package does, however, ship with a digital copy code and a non-embossed slipcover.

Light of My Life Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Light of My Life only flashes backwards a couple of times, revealing the final moments the father had his wife before the mystery illness took her and changed his world forever. These are key moments that reveal obvious, but certainly vital, foundations that better define a simple story of parenthood in a unique post-apocalyptic world. Little attention is ultimately given to why. The movie focuses on how with often lingering scenes of father-daughter companionship and breathless moments of terrifying uncertainty. Real, kinetic action is rare, and the movie is better for its inward, rather than outward, focus. Paramount's Blu-ray is disappointingly featureless, but then again the movie's tone might feel betrayed by any sort of behind-the-scenes insight (though certainly the same can be said of many other films). Video and audio qualities are good. Very highly recommended.