The Best Movie You Never Saw: Defending Your Life

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Welcome to The Best Movie You NEVER Saw, a column dedicated to examining films that have flown under the radar or gained traction throughout the years, earning them a place as a cult classic or underrated gem that was either before it’s time and/or has aged like a fine wine.

This week we’ll be looking at DEFENDING YOUR LIFE!

THE STORY: On his thirty-ninth birthday, a Los Angeles advertising executive, Daniel Miller (Albert Brooks), is suddenly killed in a car accident. He wakes up to find himself in Judgment City, a stop-over for the newly deceased, where their lives are literally put on trial in order to determine what their next stop is. While there, he meets Julia (Meryl Streep), a vivacious woman who’s led a seemingly perfect life, and the two quickly fall in love. But, with Julia surely on her way to the next plane of existence, Daniel quickly realizes he’s going the other way – back to earth in a reincarnated form to live life over again.

THE PLAYERS: Starring: Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep & Rip Torn. Directed by Albert Brooks.

"I've gotten thousands and thousands of letters of people, who had relatives that were dying, or they were dying themselves, and the movie made them feel better. I guess it's because it presents some possibility that doesn't involve clouds and ghostly images."- Albert Brooks – Rolling Stone

THE HISTORY: Albert Brooks has had an interesting career. While neurotic leading men in comedy circa the seventies-eighties-nineties weren’t necessarily in short supply, Brooks, who often wrote and directed his own material, was a different beast. In MODERN ROMANCE, Brooks allowed himself to be depicted as repugnant, crazy and toxic, more so than even someone like Woody Allen would allow. His follow-up, LOST IN AMERICA was a deeply incisive look at the idealism of the sixties making way for the yuppie greed of the eighties (making the argument that the presumed idealism never really existed in the first place), but – like it’s predecessor, it was never anything more than a modest success at the box office (which is crazy considering what a landmark film it’s seen as now).

“All of my movies had to go through the normal testing processes, and I never got E.T.-type test scores. From Real Life to Modern Romance, some of the cards were like, “What’s wrong with this person?” So it was funny because this movie got like a B+ overall, but it got an A+ from young people. Literally, from 18 to 25, the cards were off the charts. I was all excited, and the studio basically said to me, “Well, we’re not going to market an Albert Brooks movie to that group anyway. So it’s nice, and you should feel good about it, but it doesn’t matter. We’re not going to release it to that group. That’s a big, expensive group.” –Albert Brooks – Rolling Stone

His follow-up, DEFENDING YOUR LIFE, would be doomed to the same fate. While significantly more family-friendly than his previous films, with an upbeat, optimistic vibe and a strong message, the movie eked out a modest $16 million at the domestic box office. Yet, like virtually all of his films, it went on to major success on home video. Among those that have seen it, it’s a classic.

WHY IT’S GREAT: DEFENDING YOUR LIFE has always been a movie that’s resonated with me. As I get older, I tend to get something new from the film every time I re-watch it, and sure enough – being thirty-seven and approaching the age (thirty-nine) Brooks’s Daniel is in the film – the movie’s message hit even closer to home this time around. The message, in a nutshell, is that as humans our biggest adversary is fear. Fear is what keeps us from being happy, be it in work, relationships, or anything else – it’s the one thing we need to overcome to be happy.

While Brooks is certainly approaching this from a privileged perspective (I almost choked at his character’s ennui over a 50k salary near the start of his career– money that would still be considered good all these years later) the message is nonetheless universal. So does his depiction of the afterlife. Here, there’s no real mention of God, with the philosophy being that when we’re born into the universe, we stick around for an awfully long time in various forms. While Judgment City is indeed quite American, it’s noted early-on that the city is designed to be as familiar to its visitors as possible, meaning that there are many such cities for people from all over the world.

“But the interesting thing about Defending Your Life is that it’s been 25 years and if you look at it on Amazon, it always sells at the same rate. And that makes me feel pretty good because I don’t think this is aging too much. I think what the movie is saying is going to stay relevant for a long, long time because fear isn’t going away.” – Albert Brooks – Rolling Stone

The casting is terrific, with Brooks nicely vulnerable as the kind but neurotic Daniel, who’s so weighed down by insecurity there’s a very real possibility that he’ll be sent back to Earth in order to do things over. By contrast, there’s Meryl Streep’s Julia, who lived life to its fullest and seems sure to move on to the next plane of existence. Streep is luminous as Daniel’s unlikely love interest, and her chemistry with Brooks is pitch-perfect. The supporting cast is similarly good, with the great Rip Torn as Daniel’s boisterous lawyer, and Lee Grant as the incisive prosecutor.

BEST SCENE: When this movie came out, actress Shirley MacLaine had been famously stating her belief in reincarnation on various talk shows and in her memoirs. In a coup, Brooks was able to score her for a cameo at the “Past Lives Pavilion”. This scene is a gem.

SEE IT: DEFENDING YOUR LIFE is on DVD, Blu-ray and iTunes (only 9.99!).

PARTING SHOT: DEFENDING YOUR LIFE is a movie that’s always struck a chord with me and one I’m fond of revisiting. It's always helped me get a little perspective on things and I highly recommend any of you who haven’t seen it check it out. It’s a real classic (as are many of Brooks’s films).