I would have liked it better had Criss D’Amato’s Cheers to Life (Viva a Vida) delved deeper into the characters, made an effort to understand the complicated nature of human relationships, and presented a more nuanced and detailed screenplay. Cheers to Life has its heart in the right place, but it didn’t impact me the way a film with this subject matter had the potential to. So let’s find out what happened in the film and if the protagonist was successful on her quest.
Spoiler Alert
How did Jessica find out about her grandmother?
Jessica worked at an antique store in Rio De Janeiro, and she struggled really hard to make ends meet. Being careless at work, breaking antiques, and ending up paying for it from her salary didn’t help her cause. One day, she was at her shop, looking through a new set of antiques that had come in, when she found the same kind of locket that her mother had left for her. Jessica got curious, and there was a voice within her that told her that the family who had sent the antiques in could know more about her mother or her family. Jessica went to meet the man who had sent those items, Gabriel, and that’s when she got to know that she was not wrong in her speculation. Gabriel’s grandmother, Miriam, had two sisters, Raquel and Hava. Just days before Hava was going to get married, she ran away from the house with her lover, Ben, aka Benjamin, never to return again. Nobody knew where Hava went, and whether she was still alive or not. It was a huge scandal for the family, and they cut all ties with her, as, according to them, she had brought shame on them. Hava also felt her own people didn’t understand her. She loved Ben; she wanted him to be part of her family, but she was also aware of the kind of stubborn and rigid people her family members were. Gabriel didn’t know this, but Hava had a daughter, who, about 20 years later, came back to live with Raquel. Now, this daughter was Jessica’s mother, Deborah. Raquel and Deborah were traveling together when they met with an accident. Deborah was just 23 years old when she passed away, leaving a little daughter behind. Gabriel and Jessica didn’t know at that point in time why Deborah left Hava and came to live with Gabriel’s great-aunt, Raquel. After Deborah’s death, Jessica’s father didn’t want to take on the responsibility of looking after her. He abandoned her when she was quite young and then never contacted her again. Deprived of love and affection, a young Jessica was desperate to know if any of her family members were still out there. It didn’t take long for Jessica to find out that Hava and Benjamin ran a travel agency in Tel Aviv, Israel. She contacted Gabriel, told him that she would give him a share of the property that she was going to get from her grandparents, and asked him to join her in her quest. Gabriel had literally been thrown out of his house by his girlfriend, and since he didn’t have anything better to do, he decided to take Jessica’s offer.
Why did Hava leave Ben?
Jessica booked a tour with Ben’s company, and she was very eager to meet her grandfather and tell him who she was. The moment she saw Ben, she couldn’t believe that he was the same adventurous man who had run away with her grandmother and promised her a lifetime of adventure. Ben looked like any tired 80-year-old who didn’t have anything to look forward to, who liked to stick by his routine, liked the comfort of his pillow more than an adrenaline-pumping adventure, and who basically had lost his interest in most of the things that he once loved doing. Back in their day, the man had come to pick up Hava, wearing a leather jacket on his bike. But now he didn’t seem to have that kind of flair in his personality. Ben told Jessica (not knowing at that moment that she was his granddaughter) that his wife had gotten up one day and left the house, without telling him anything. Hava had left a letter in which she had mentioned that Ben needed to remember who he was, find his long-lost adventurous self and how their relationship was in the past in order to find her. Though Hava had left her, it was he who had given up on their relationship a long time back. Yes, he did not abandon his wife or take any reckless decisions, but he had just stopped looking forward to the things he once used to love. Deborah’s death had changed both of them drastically. They’d had a fight with her, as she wanted to go to Brazil to pursue further studies. Deborah wanted to live her life like she wanted, and she told her parents that she should have the freedom to do so. Another thing that Ben and Hava didn’t like was that she was in touch with Raquel, her aunt, and had decided to go and live with her. Ben and Hava both had been treated very badly by the latter’s family, and they didn’t want to have anything to do with them. But Deborah went to Brazil anyway, and days later, Ben and Hava got the news of her demise. Hava felt that it was her fault that her daughter met with her fateful end. Ben and Hava hadn’t been talking to their daughter at the time, and that hurt them even more.
Now that Hava had left the house, Ben didn’t know what to do. He tried justifying himself by telling Jessica and Gabriel that his experiences had changed him completely, and it was quite normal for him to not be the same person he once used to be. But the important part was not that he had changed or that he had become more serious in life. The fact remained that he had stopped living his life and valuing the existence of his wife. He had started taking her for granted. It felt like the man was just biding his days and had stopped living his life altogether.
Was Jessica Able To Find Hava?
It was Gabriel who realized that Ben’s tour bus took all the tourists to the places where Ben and Hava had created memories back in the day. They had gone to the Wailing Wall and the Solomon Mines already, and Gabriel deciphered through the letter that Hava had left for Ben before leaving that they would find her at the last destination of the tour. Meanwhile, Jessica didn’t have the courage to tell Ben that she was his granddaughter till the very end of Cheers to Life. Before she could reveal everything, Ben figured it out by himself and got very angry at Jessica. At first, he didn’t believe that she was his granddaughter and then told her that she needed to leave before he lost his composure. So Gabriel and Jessica went to the last destination, and the former’s speculations were right, as they ended up finding Hava there. It was the same old place where Hava had come after the death of her daughter. She wanted to jump off that cliff because of her guilt, but Ben had arrived just in time and asked her to not do so. Once again, Hava stood at a crossroads, and she didn’t know what to do to bring back the old Ben and invite some happiness back into her life. Gabriel and Jessica took Hava back, who then talked to Ben and told her that Jessica was actually their granddaughter. Hava said that she didn’t need any sort of proof because Jessica had the eyes of her mother. Hava could never forget those beautiful eyes, and she knew that Jessica was not lying to her.
In Cheers to Life’s ending, the local police got hold of Jessica since she had stolen an antique from her boss’ shop to buy tickets to Israel for Gabriel and herself. She was made to sit in a plane, and she would have been deported if Ben hadn’t made a heroic entry at the end and asked the guards to leave his granddaughter alone once and for all. Ben made the payment on Jessica’s behalf, and the embassy gave the local police the order to leave Jessica be.
Jessica and Gabriel also had grown quite close to each other during the trip. Once Gabriel got to know that he wasn’t related to Jessica, as Hava was adopted by their family, he did not refrain from getting intimate with her. There was a time when Gabriel thought that he would just stay friends with Jessica, but I don’t think that that is going to happen. It was a happy ending for everybody. Hava was more than happy, as she saw Ben in his old avatar, donning a leather jacket and riding a bike. After everything that had happened, Hava and Benjamin realized that they needed to learn from their mistakes and move ahead in their lives. They realized the importance of chasing happiness at all times. They realized that, at times, life threw you off balance, but happiness, no matter what anybody said, was always a choice that could be made. One could choose to carry all the guilt and regret, or they could see the brighter side and be grateful for what they had.
