After Watching 'Before I Fall'

A short review this time too. - Contains spoilers. -

1. My thoughts on the title

The original title is Before I Fall, which translated literally can be rendered as something like 'before dying.' I don't know who translated it, but I have no idea on what grounds 'The 7th Day I Died' (the Korean release title) came from. For reference, the protagonist dies more than 7 times. Because she's trapped in a time loop that never ends no matter how many times she dies. This is a spoiler too, I suppose, but since the film's synopsis says she returns to 'that day' (Saturday) no matter how many times she dies, I think you could call it a spoiler that isn't really a spoiler. Anyway, translating it as 'before dying' seems too clichéd so they probably changed it, but it's a bit of a shame too. I just don't like the number 7. I don't like it because it's a number with no particular reason behind it.

2. Subject matter, story

The subject of the time loop has now become an all-too-familiar one. The time-loop film that left an impression on me is, again, 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.' That film was one that tried, in its own way, to dissolve the subject of the 'time loop' into 'the everyday' and 'romance.' Because it used time loops over whether or not she hears 'I love you,' and over whether or not there's a traffic accident. By the end it does, of course, in its own way come to find the meaning of the 'time loop.' This subject, having become familiar that way, was, in this film, combined with the subject of 'Sisyphus' and thereby 'transformed' a little uniquely, I think. In fact, it's even ambiguous to call this film a time loop. After all, the very Sisyphus dealt with in the class within the film is the film's story.

Since you might not know the story of Sisyphus, let me briefly introduce it: Zeus gave a punishment to a man named 'Sisyphus,' and that punishment was exactly 'the punishment of rolling a stone up a hill.' Because the stone rolls back down once you roll it up the hill, Sisyphus received the punishment of having to endlessly roll the stone up. The film's content itself is the same as this Sisyphus story. The protagonist 'Sam' endlessly wakes up on the morning of 'the cupid day'/Saturday. Waking up endlessly, Sam finds various meanings of daily life. There are scenes where she breaks out of routine and where she spends more time with family. Within that, Sam gets her answer to the question 'who am I.'

In this film, good-hearted characters appear. To put it a bit more concretely, characters who hold 'good memories gained in childhood' appear. This is both the most everyday thing and also quite movie-like. In fact, someone in the real world does think this way. They have thoughts similar to 'Because I was rescued by a firefighter when I was young, I decided to devote my life to saving people like a firefighter.' In that sense, 'Kent' tells Sam that in 3rd grade of elementary school, to him crying, 'Sam' had become a 'hero,' and because he decided that from then on he himself would become a hero, he had always been good to her. The good deeds of people, started from something small, you might say.

In the scene where Sam's mother says 'when you were little, you were a kind child,' telling her that she's a 'good child' because of the memory of how, if she rode only one horse, the other horses would feel left out, so she came out having ridden all the horses - within that scene, Sam, in her own way, gets an answer to the question 'who am I.' In that the film's ending shows 'who I am,' and in that it's not 'Lindsay,' who seems to have committed the most sins, but 'Sam,' who seems to have lived the most ordinary life, who bears Sisyphus's punishment, the film seems to throw a message to the modern people, the ordinary citizens, living everyday, ordinary lives. Namely, 'What kind of person are you?'

3. In closing.

While eating, I told a friend about this film and then asked them. That friend had been having a lot of conflict with their lover for a while, so I asked. "If you were told you were going to die tomorrow, what would you say to that person?" The answer that came back to this question was that they'd say 'I'm sorry and thank you.' I'm reminded of a phrase I saw somewhere on the internet that today's life is the life someone who died yesterday so desperately wished for. Let's make it a day where we live thinking about who we are. It's a film worth recommending in its own way. Even within a predictable story development, there's something for us to think about. The fact that it's predictable means 'it's everyday,' and as much as it's clichéd, it brings, in its own way, a 'universal feeling.'

P.S. Ladies, if there's a man around you who's been good to you for a long time, I think it's also worth taking the chance to ask that person once why they're so good to you. Because he might be a really decent person, like 'Kent' in the film. As I see it, 'Rob' is just a hopeless wolf, nothing more. Come to think of it, 'Kent' was neither a baby nor a wolf, but an upright young man. Hooray for young men.