‘Wonderfully sentimental’: why Defending Your Life is my feelgood movie

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In a world where we venerate the actor-writer-director (Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen etc), the great Albert Brooks still feels widely underappreciated. His voice work in Finding Nemo and his Oscar-nominated turn in Broadcast News gave him a respectable level of recognition and acclaim. However, he remains immensely underrated, especially compared with his comedic contemporaries like Steve Martin or Bill Murray. As a writer-director-leading man, he produced some of the funniest, most insightful comedies of the 80s and 90s, often with biting social commentary. But when I need the January blues lifted, I turn to his wonderfully sentimental and uplifting 1991 film Defending Your Life.

Brooks plays Daniel Miller, a divorced, lonely adman with little in his life besides a new BMW. When he is killed in a bus collision, he is transported to Judgment City, a Disneyland-like depiction of purgatory. It’s here where the recently deceased, good and bad, are put on trial to “defend your life”. Miller is cross-examined by his lawyer Bob Diamond (a surprisingly smiley Rip Torn) and prosecutor Lena Foster (Lee Grant). They look over nine days of Miller’s life to decide his future. If you win your trial, you “move forward”. You lose your trial: you head back to Earth to “try again”.

I’ve always loved Brooks’ singular depiction of the studio backlot-like Judgment City. It’s a fairytale that recalls the best of Frank Capra and Pixar. The weather in the city is always a perfect 74F and you travel around on Universal Studios-style trams. Most important, you can eat the nicest food without putting on an ounce (Daniel’s cheese omelette might be the nicest-looking meal ever put on screen). There are some references to religion, but God and theology are mostly ignored. Equally, the vapid elements of life on Earth are still here, leading to some of the film’s best gags. There are smutty talkshows in which a young blonde claims to have had sex with Benjamin Franklin and terrible standup comedians sing bad covers of Frank Sinatra’s That’s Life.

Judging from his previous work, it seemed like sentimentality was not in Brooks’ nature. Films such as Modern Romance and Lost in America were daring attacks on the delusions of male jealousy and the yuppie entitlement of the Reagan era. While hilarious, his protagonists represented humanity at its most smug and self-centred. With Defending Your Life, Brooks swaps these themes out for optimism and amiability.

While I love delving into the fantastical escapism of Judgment City (backed by Michael Gore’s endearingly rhapsodic score), it’s the film’s poignantly philosophical look into fear that makes it one of my absolute favourites. Daniel is a good person who could never live up to his full potential because fear dominated his every waking move. It’s Foster’s main reason why Daniel should be sent back to Earth. He worries about people’s perceptions of him (“I’m just so tired of being judged,” he remarks) and his aversion to risk-taking leads him to have an unfulfilled life.

Defending Your Life is about being unable to “move forward” (literally and figuratively) until you’ve conquered the fears that hold you back. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the film came out right at the end of the cold war, a period in which fear was engrained in the heart of the American consciousness. As Torn’s character laments to Daniel: “Fear is like a giant fog. It sits on your brain and blocks everything – real feelings, true happiness, real joy. They can’t get through that fog.”

During the breaks from his trial, Daniel begins a love affair with the virtuous Julia (Meryl Streep in her most endearing performance). I hate describing any film romance as adorable, but the chemistry between both leads is true movie magic. It’s helped that Brooks avoids cliches, never having the typical romcom moment when both characters inexplicably hate each other. When their relationship is in jeopardy, it again circles back to Daniel’s innate fear of taking chances. Without spoiling the heartwarming ending, their final scenes together are an amazing tear-jerking summation of the film’s themes. It’s up there with Jimmy Stewart running through the snow at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life.

“Life-affirming” is perhaps an overused adjective, but few movies have successfully illuminated the human condition as well as this one. Fear is commonplace in our daily lives, but Albert Brooks’ film might hold the key to rid the worries of anxiety-ridden people such as myself. As the new year often brings about feelings of regret and unease, Defending Your Life is the warmest hug you can receive.