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”.
