I enjoyed this movie. While I feel there could have been production changes - giving more insight to Paolo's inner monologue in addition, or as a substitute to a few of the many flashbacks not helpful to the audiences understanding - similar to past films, I do feel that this one was also embedded with underlying messages; specifically, related to how people live their lives and the value of shifting your perspective and what you choose to focus on.
The film is based on a man who dies, but then gets the opportunity to return to his life before his death and live for another hour and a half. In this, I found there to be many messages having to do with regret, but also highlighting the importance of not focusing on small things that really do not matter. As humans, I feel that we can be very overanalytical of things - we are very logical beings - and I think that sometimes, it can push us to spend time focusing on things with no great importance or significance, but on things that will generally not impact us in any way. In this film, I think a shift from focusing on things with little significance to ones of great importance was shown. In the beginning of the film, Paolo was questioning things such as the light turning off in the fridge when the door is closed, why a glass breaker is enclosed in a glass case, and why a taxi line is essentially backwards. To me, this was symbolic of a common concept in people - not only focusing on something of little importance, but more broadly, placing so much of our attention and energy on things out of our control. Through the film, I perceived a large priority shift in Paolo that was very opposing to his concerns in the beginning. Knowing he had such little time, his concern was solely on his wife, family, and his relationship with each of them. He did not necessarily want to fix or change anything, but soak in more time with them, and to be sure of them knowing they were loved by him, but also that they did love him too. While I do not think it should take a life ending experience for this value and want to be present, I do think that there is beauty in this realization, which I believe is one of the messages the movie was trying to get across - to focus on things in your control, the people closest to you with the more importance, who you care about, and who you really love. Rather than focusing on things out of your control, fixing things, or being regretful, learning to appreciate what is right in front of you is most oftentimes the most beneficial and most rewarding.
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