I rarely watch movies so for me to take time out to even comment means something. Last night I was channel surfing and happened upon the title of the movie. I went ahead and auto tuned it as it read interesting. Interesting is NOT a strong enough word. This is one of the best movies I have ever seen. The shots are stunning,the acting is superb, and the way it was put together was absolutely brilliant. It kept me fully engaged where most movies bore me within minutes (which is why I watch so few).I was fully enthralled from beginning to end. If you enjoy movies that make you ask yourself questions, where everything isn't handed to you on a silver platter, I highly recommend this movie. Perfect movie for minds that love to think!

I read the synopis for this film and then thought this would be a very interesting film to view. Uma Thurman does a decent job and is convincing as the tormented mother Diana who is getting over a school shooting incident that happened when she was in high school. Even Rachel Wood who plays the younger Diana back in high school is also very good. The film switches (without really any warning) between the two time periods.The film starts off well and you can be forgiven that this is going to be a melodrama with psychological themes for Diana - and it is essentially. The film doesn't give you straight on the plate what happened back at the shooting and the fact that Diana was a survivor. So you get to know her better when she was younger and how her hopes and dreams and fears were contemplated for her future adulthood and we see in the present day how this has influenced her life.Up to the halfway point the film is hooking but then it keeps switching back and forth without really giving you time to absorb what has happened in both times. You really are waiting to get down to the point of what really happened back in her high school and keeps making flashbacks to it but then keeps pausing. It can get a bit frustrating and for me personally I just wanted them to get to the point. When it gets there, it is a bit puzzling but once you realise what the film was climaxing to - it is a bit of a cheat (though luckily nothing as horrible as Perfect Stranger's ending).Thurman gives the performance to watch here and Evan Rachel Wood is equally as good. The cinematography was really good and captured the mood of despair and sorrow the film carries. I don't know why so many critics hated it - it must be because of the constant switching back to try and entice you and ends up frustrating you sometimes and the ending which seems a bit implausible but overall I enjoyed this film and it shows how for some people they can imagine a life they may have in future and not realise how much the present impacts them.

I saw this film many months ago, but it is one that remains strong in my mind.I think it's Uma's best performance yet, but it's the themes of the film that are especially powerful. Life and death and responsibility for these.Like The Sixth Sense, it only becomes clear at the end what the film is really about, and after that the preceding events look quite different. It is a kind of extended dream poem centred on abortion. I remain pro-choice, but supporters of this view are justified in being concerned lately about the "new sophistication" of anti-choice, as exemplified in this very moving film. It certainly stirred me up more deeply than any other approach to the subject ever has.

Given the number of puzzled viewers I thought it might be helpful to just pull together some messages I have left in answer to various questions on the IMDb message board. I found it more interesting than any film I have watched over the past few years. But I like off-kilter philosophical stuff that merits repeat viewings and gives the brain cells some challenging exercise. And I like adaptations that improve upon their source novels. I like Evan Rachel Wood visually and as an actress. I like carefully crafted films where the director, the production designer, and the editor have obviously been in sync and have created a synergy between the elements; where almost every detail has a purpose and there is not a lot of throw away fluff padding the running length or trying to expand the target audience.I can offer a few comparisons for prospective viewers; overall it is probably closest to "Carnival of Souls" (1962) so if you are a fan of that film I can almost guarantee that you will connect with this one. In style, Director Vadim Perelman reminds me a great deal of Atom Egoyan; so if you hated "Exotica", "Where the Truth Lies", or "The Sweet Hereafter" you would be wise to give "The Life Before Her Eyes" a wide birth. The story itself is a blend of "Home Room" and Donnie Darko (2001); with the match cut editing of "The Hours" (2002) linking three separate timelines together. Philosophically it blends the existential themes of "Carnival of Souls" and "The Wages of Fear" (1953), but I've not yet seen anyone else make this comparison.STOP!!! If you haven't seen it yet stop here, watch the film, come back and read the rest, and then watch it again. Don't read any further unless you are prepared for spoilers.The only scene that takes place in the present is the scene in the rest room. The other stuff is either Diana's flashbacks to her growing friendship with Maureen, or Diana's imagined future flashing before her eyes as she tries to make a decision. The flashbacks show viewers the process of Diana becoming less selfish and more responsible; a maturing that greatly complicates her decision.I was not as blown away after seeing the film for the first time as I am now, although I bought into the friendship dynamic completely. I like it a little better each time I view it (including watching it with the commentary special feature turned on). Much of it is expressionism, which we don't see much in American films, so it takes a while to really connect with the stuff. And that requires you to let go of the plot and just go with the style and the theme, something easier to do "after" the first viewing. Everything is a literary device and getting caught in a plausibility trap will prevent you from making the connection needed to really go beneath the surface of the story.The really incredible thing to me is how uniquely it explores the implications of friendship/conscience. There are rewards to friendship but also obligations (responsibilities) and if you don't feel these, then you are mistaking friendship for something much shallower. Diana's life essentially becomes a Hobson's choice; between something and nothing. And the viewer gets to watch as Wood nonverbally conveys the process of her character slowly coming to that realization. The "life before her eyes" becomes nothing once she understands the implications of that option.The film is all about point of view, everything is being seen from Diana's POV except for the rest room scene which is from the audience point of view; where the actress Wood is communicating nonverbally with viewers in about the best acting sequence you are likely to ever witness. She is simultaneously flashing back to events in her friendship with Maureen and to parallel events in her imagined future.Essential to understanding this process (and the film) is to recognize that she and Maureen have already spent a lot of time together imagining each others' futures; and that these times are central to Diana's thoughts and decision-making process in the rest room.I think that the key sequence (which I only really picked up on during a later viewing) is when they are walking together on the sidewalk as the lawn sprinkler showers them with mist. The sequence is repeated later for emphasis. During this Maureen talks about how she used to watch flowers in a heavy rain. Telling Diana how the rain will crush the flowers, yet amazingly "some" of them are able to recover and bloom again as if nothing had happened. Diana flashes back to this and it is central to her decision. She believes that if she is killed instead of Maureen, that it will crush Maureen but that she will recover and bloom again. She contrasts this to the life she is imagining for herself if she allows Maureen to be killed, and the result is reflected in the crushed, decayed, and withered flowers that are symbolically shown in the later scenes of her imagined future.Also note the scenes where Diana is searching for Emma. What the director and production designer are trying to communicate in those scenes is that the real Diana has already been shot and her imaginary future is unraveling. Watch what happens to the necklace the adult Diana is wearing in the woods (falling in the water in the woods coincides with the young Diana falling into the water that is pooling on the rest room floor), her necklace has broken and the stones are hanging in the same pattern the bullets made on the young Diana's chest.There is a director's commentary on the DVD, in which he takes you through every clue and symbolic reference in his film.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.