If you live your life afraid, are you really living?

This week, to keep the wordiness down, I think I will only do a movie review for submission to be marked, but still write blogs on music and TV. In keeping suit with things going on in my life right now, I had my choices narrowed down to 2 movies. I figure I’ll save the other movie for next week, or for just before Valentine’s Day. This movie though can work for me right now.

Movie: Defending Your Life

This week I chose to write about this movie because again, it is one of my favourites. But it also rings true with the way I’ve been feeling lately. I’ll get back to that point later though, and I’ll tell ya about the movie first.

It was written, produced, directed and stars Albert Brooks. You probably know him best as the voice of Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons, or the voice of Marlin from Finding Nemo. He is a hilarious actor and comedian. Fun trivia tidbit, he is the brother of Super Dave Osbourne, and their birth last name is Einstein. Yes, his birth name was Albert Einstein. What odd parents.

Anyways, the movie is about a man named Daniel (Brooks) who dies while driving his new car. He is sent not to heaven or hell, but to Judgment City. It is a large metropolitan area where you stay for a few days after your death. You have to go in to a court and defend your life. You have to prove to the judges that you lived your life to the fullest and deserve to move on to the afterlife. If you lose the trial, you get reborn. While in Judgment City, Daniel meets Julia (played by the lovely Meryl Streep). They begin to fall for each other.

When Daniel’s trial begins, they point out that his majour downfall in life and one of the deciding factors as to whether he will move on or not is fear. Was he fearless enough in life to move on, or was he afraid to do things that made him happy? This is why I love this movie. I am tired of living my life in fear. It made me realize that. I don’t want to always be afraid to say or do something, because that way I wouldn’t be living life to the fullest. They show Daniel all the moments in his life where he missed out on something good, or missed an opportunity to be happy because he was just too afraid.

It was those scenes that really opened my eyes with this movie. I realized that there are alot of things I could have done differently, or fixed, or tried to work through, if I hadn’t been afraid to do so. This movie is one I think everyone should see because although it isn’t easy to start facing those fears, seeing what could happen if you don’t sort of shocks you out of it.