The Life Before Her Eyes

“The power of visualization can shape one’s own future.”

This movie – The Life Before Her Eyes – is based on the thesis above. Diana, Evan Rachel Wood, is imagining what her future life would be like after she listened to the speech given by one professor at her school, Paul McFee.

Diana is an imaginative, impetuous, wild teenager. After listening to McFee’s speech, Diana starts to visualize her future life. She is married to Professor Paul McFee, having one daughter, Emma, and she works as an art teacher. Contradictory from her life as a wild teenager, she visualizes her future life as a very ‘common’ woman in general, in a very common marriage life.

However, Diana cannot prove the thesis stated by the professor, that she can shape her own future by having strong visualization – that she would lead a very common life, like many other women on the globe. Diana is tragically killed in a Columbine-like shooting incident at her school. When the killing happens, Diana is in a restroom with her best friend, Maureen. After shooting many people around the school, Michael, the shooter, enters the restroom where Diana and Maureen tensely wait for their turn. Michael forces the two girls to choose which one to be killed. Maureen offers herself first. Michael then asks Diana why not her. She acquiesces and asks to be killed. She is then shot and dies; leaving Maureen shocked.

The interesting thing from the visualization, in my opinion, is that Diana visualizes herself as a very ‘common’ woman, a married woman, having a kid, working as a teacher, and her loving husband (eventually) is involved in an affair with a younger woman. Diana’s life as a teenager is different from Maureen who is depicted as a conservative girl. Diana exposes her curiosity in drugs and sex by having a relationship with a guy who likes her because she is a ‘courageous’ girl. The guy does not want to be responsible, though, after Diana gets pregnant, and let her solve the problem by going to the hospital herself to get abortion.

Nevertheless, Diana visualizes her daughter, Emma as having a personality trait like her. This makes herself feels very concerned.

Anyway, when finally Michael chooses to kill her, instead of Maureen, from her facial expression, one can see that Diana is depicted to die peacefully. She has saved her best friend’s life.

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