Light of My Life is a 2019 drama about a father and his child who journey through the outskirts of society a decade after a pandemic has wiped out half the world’s population.
Post-apocalyptic stories have had a slow steady evolution over the past few decades, from combative, vehicular bloodbaths across barren terrain to more intimate struggles for survival less centered on the chaotic violence and more on the desperate personal challenges of keeping alive. With Casey Affleck‘s debut effort Light of My Life, it is just that, perhaps offering up a familiar theme most will recognize at least superficially, but not for a moment scrimping on the emotional impact it has stored in potential. This is a deeply sentimental and harrowing film that is as traumatizing as it is wondrous.
Dad (Affleck) is traveling across the United States along with his son, though that’s not really the case. His ‘son’ is actually his daughter, Rag (Anna Pniowsky), a truth that must be keep a secret. That’s because things are not well. A horrific viral plague has swept most of the entire population of women from the planet, leaving men to deal with what could amount to a species-ending catastrophe. Rag is still a child, eleven-years-old, able to – at least from a short distance – appear like a boy, but the landscape is not safe, with men hunting and collecting any females they can find for unmentionable acts in secret bunkers. Dad must protect Rag, nomadically trying to find sustenance and a roof while his daughter begins to question the world around her and establish her own lot in the chaos, forcing him into sometimes hostile corners.
While the story might ring of a few other recent entries in the genre, including the equally challenging 2006 Alfonso Cuarón thriller Children of Men, Affleck, who is also the film’s credited writer, makes this his own, not steering too hard into the now trope-ish standards of these kinds of movies, but instead ringing all he can out of the characters. This is a truly harrowing bit of cinema that is at times, achingly authentic, jarringly heartbreaking, and always convincing. Dad’s poignant and sometimes painful efforts to deal with a growing daughter, whose mother (Elisabeth Moss) she can’t remember – she succumbing to the virus while Rag was an infant – are truly affecting.
That said, it is not an action movie, far from it, the film carefully paced as Affleck tenders to these few people with sensational attention to detail. We become part of the odyssey, sympathetic to the near impossible efforts of Dad while drawn to the endless curiosity of Rag. And it’s the performances of both Affleck and Pniowsky, who is nothing short of a minor miracle, that make this such a powerful experience. You believe these are real people, fall into their plight without question, and become almost symbiotically attached to their fates. It’s nothing you can shake off with ease.
There’s a kind of knowing where this must end, and Affleck lets Dad be the mentor, teacher, and protector with a saddening sense of reality (and sometimes brutal violence), creating one of the most endearing on-screen characters in a long time. Along with Pniowsky, Light of My Life makes for a story with powerful resonance that may test audiences weaned on fast-paced action, but is nonetheless a potent, rewarding journey you shouldn’t miss.