Written and directed by Casey Affleck, Light Of My Life is a parenting guide during the apocalypse. Casey Affleck takes on the role of Dad with his daughter, Rag (Anna Pniowsky), navigating the post-apocalyptic world. After a deadly plague wipes out the female population, Dad disguises Rag as a boy in order to ensure her survival in the world. At the cusp of becoming a teenager, Rag struggles to find who she and her place in the future world.
Affleck’s Light Of My Life brings drama, loneliness, and a feeling of utter sadness. The feeling of living off-the-grid in a bleak and broken world is prominent throughout the film. Affleck does a great job creating an interesting world that grabs attention and shows you a sorrow-filled adventure. The somber and eerie tone of the film fills you with anxiety in almost every scene. It’s an emotional rollercoaster as the film follows a father bent on protecting his daughter at all costs.
The relationship between father and daughter is a complex and beautiful one. Affleck and Pniowsky do an amazing job together in all their scenes. They give one of the most believable father-daughter relationships in a dystopian society possible. Every scene that they are together is just heartwarming because you get a sense of love between them. Dad unconditionally loves Rag and is willing to do anything for her even if it means pushing her to hide who she is. Affleck does a stunning job of bringing a realistic character to light that has no clue what he’s doing other than surviving. Pniowsky makes Rag to be a light of innocence and love but embodies growth through rebellion.
Dad is a flawed character who tries his best to raise his daughter in an environment that wants to abuse her. He’s a clueless father when it comes to a growing girl which adds depth to the character as he tries to shield her from the monsters of the world. Rag has followed Dad’s instruction her whole life and during the film, you see a shift in her as a person. She’s smart, curious, and rebellious which leads to many conflicts between father and daughter. Rag wants more independents and is starting to ask more questions about herself as a female and the world around her. Dad is a typical father in the sense that he was no clue how to deal with the shift in her growing. Affleck portrays the right amount of worried and awkwardness of a father caring for his daughter. Moments like “the bird and the bees” talk is cringy and utterly uncomfortable for both characters, but it’s done so well it’s such a realistic scene.
Rag has had to hide her true identity as a female from the world her whole life. Now just as she’s entering becoming a teen, Rag is questioning all world and why she can’t be her. In the film, there’s a scene where Rag finds a closet full of girl clothes and decides to wear a “sparkly” jacket while in the house. Consequently, Dad and Rag fight about the wearing jacket and the idea of Rag wanting to embrace her identity more than Dad wants. Scenes like the ones mentioned gave more depth to the film.
The only real issue that lowers the rating with the film is its pace and lack of action. Throughout the whole film, the snail pace made it extremely hard to watch. You lose attention quite quickly as some scenes drag on and on. The scenes may add to the artiest flare of the whole production, but it was just too much. The first scene was a long and awkward bedtime story between Dad and Rag which made it so hard to capture your full attention. It took about two different tries to get through the whole film as almost the time nothing exciting happened. There were a couple of chases and some close calls, but nothing every evaluated expect for a fight in the last 10 minutes. The fact that it labels itself as a post-apocalyptic/ dystopian film you expect action, suspense, and a little horror. The approach taken with the film didn’t really provide any of these expectations. While Affleck created an artistically beautiful sleepy and haunted world, it is still a slight letdown. Overall the movie is fresh storytelling on parenting during the end of the world, but it lacked pace and action.
