Review: How I Live Now (2013)

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Tom Holland, George MacKay
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Country: UK
Genre: Action | Drama | Thriller | War
Official Website: Here

Editor’s Notes: How I Live Now opens this Friday, November 8th.

Young love is a tender thing. Easily dismissed as puppy love, infatuation, immature discovery, or any number of rather derogatory adjectives. Love is love and it’s real when you feel it. This is true for senior citizens, adults, and even teenagers, excuse me, young adults. How I live Now is Kevin McDonald’s adaptation of Meg Rosoff’s novel of the same name. It’s a book that falls squarely into the hip, new, category of Young Adult fiction. These books have lately been adapted to the big screen with large success. City of Bones, Percy Jackson, and most notably, the Twilight series are all examples of YA novels becoming big budget films. The difference between those titles and How I Live Now is that the fantasy elements in something like Twilight are clearly fantasy, whereas the fantasy of How I Live Now is based in a terrifyingly possible reality.

The difference between those titles and How I Live Now is that the fantasy elements in something like Twilight are clearly fantasy, whereas the fantasy of How I Live Now is based in a terrifyingly possible reality.

How I Live Now begins as a rather drab, run of the mill story about an angst ridden teenager from New York City who has been forced to move to England to live with her rag-tag, bohemian cousins on a farm in the countryside outside of London. She dishes out sarcasm and attitude at every moment, giving her well-meaning cousins unnecessary amounts of grief. This is Daisy (Saorise Ronan). Daisy is fairly indifferent to her circumstances, seemingly happy to spend her days holed up in her bedroom listening to bad pop music on her iPod, until she meets Edmund (George MacKay). Edmund is a strapping young lad with a gift for speaking to animals and posing gloriously in the sunset. He’s beautiful and Daisy notices. This trite and banal tween love story goes on for the first twenty minutes or so and really does the trick of fooling the audience into thinking that this is not going to get any better. Nice cinematography aside, the idea of spending an hour and forty minutes watching these two teenagers pitch woo and swoon in the countryside is not appealing in the least. And it’s a good thing that McDonald must have had a similar notion. Just as the two have dropped their defenses and fallen in love, a nuclear bomb goes off and destroys London, igniting World War 3.

The ooey gooey love story of the first half hour is a bit too saccharine for an older audience, yet the graphic violence, piles of corpses, and depictions of gang rape are a bit too intense for the younger crowd. It’ll be a tough sell.

From this point on How I Live Now becomes a completely different film. It switches gears from YA infatuation to full-blown survivalist odyssey. Daisy and her young cousin Piper (Harley Bird) are separated from Edmund and Isaac and forced to go to a military labour camp, while Edmund and Isaac are taken to an army base, presumably to be forced into combat. As the group is being divided they make a pledge to meet back at the family farmhouse. We then join Daisy and Piper on their cross-country journey to reunite with their family.

This film certainly isn’t what you’d expect. The stark division in tone from the first act to the second will throw a lot of people for a loop. It’s also a little unclear as to how the film will be marketed. The ooey gooey love story of the first half hour is a bit too saccharine for an older audience, yet the graphic violence, piles of corpses, and depictions of gang rape are a bit too intense for the younger crowd. It’ll be a tough sell.

Marketing issues aside, the film has a lot to offer. The obvious history lesson and analogue for London during the WW2 blitz attacks is an interesting reminder that the human condition is not one to rest easy during times of peace. All of the politics throughout the film are only hinted at through stolen glances at computer screens or overheard telephone conversations, but the general notion that a combative nation with nuclear capability could easily launch a strike against a so-called developed nation isn’t too far a stretch. These stolen glances are one of the most effective aspects of the film. Through Daisy we experience the war in an isolated, helpless fashion. While Daisy proves to be quite capable of protecting herself, she is totally at the mercy of the events happening around her. It’s a setting and a circumstance that generates real tension, and it’s in this tension that McDonald makes his strongest decisions.

This film certainly isn’t essential viewing, but it’s a strong effort and an interesting addition to a growing sub-genre of YA adaptations. As a always, Saorise Ronan steals every scene making this film worth viewing simply for the power of her performance.

[notification type=”star”]64/100 ~ OKAY. This film certainly isn’t essential viewing, but it’s a strong effort and an interesting addition to a growing sub-genre of YA adaptations. As a always, Saorise Ronan steals every scene making this film worth viewing simply for the power of her performance.[/notification]