Mad Home

Somewhat odd to be on the other side of the world while my home town goes completely wild
(And if, four years ago, someone told me that in 2003 Seth Green would be hanging out in Lower Hutt but I would be in Edinburgh, I would have thought them a very adventurous sort of psychic.)

‘Love, actually’

Went to see new Brithope ‘Love, Actually’ t’other night. (“Oh no!” readers cry, “he’s reduced to writing about movies already!” Well, shush. I’m going somewhere with this.)

‘Love…’ does what it says on the box – romance, Christmas, snow, public declarations of love, Atkinson Firth Grant Rickman Thompson Lincoln Knightley Neeson etc etc. The bad stuff is also pretty unsurprising – non-white characters are all in marginal roles (London, the whitest most-ethnically-diverse city in the world!), dumb bits with Comedy Americans, a gobsmackingly stupid portrayal of politics that could be overlooked if September 11 wasn’t explicitly referenced in the opening monologue.

But.

‘Love…’ does its po-mo po-faced, with characters taking their love lessons from movies (it ain’t over till its over, it all comes together at the last possible moment, you have to run across town and call out someone’s name before they slip out of your life forever). It even quotes about 10 seconds of ‘Titanic’ full-frame (I had a weird feeling that someone taped over the movie). The ‘Titanic’ riff is calculated. ‘Love, Actually’ has sold itself as the follow-on to ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ and ‘Notting Hill’, but that’s just to get you in the door. It has set its sights far higher than that. ‘Love, Actually’ is intended as the spiritual successor to ‘Titanic’.

(ASIDE: ‘Titanic’, of course, is the most recent adoptee of the Gone With The Wind Trophy for the Most Romantic Movie Of All Time. It’s also a nice barometer for comprehending movie criticism.

Now, I loved ‘Titanic’. I saw it three times on the big screen. I do not apologise for this. Sure, the characters are two-dimensional. Sure, it’s an unrealistic fairy-tale stapled on to a horrific historical tragedy. Sure. But if you buy into its desperate Mills & Boon-via-Tom Clancy logic, it’s one hell of a tale. And it isn’t that hard to buy in – this was the movie that broke records and made 3-hour films entirely mainstream, remember? (Another of Jim Cameron’s multitiude of sins. But I digress.)

Lots of smart people hated ‘Titanic’ but when they say why they hate it, most of the time at least, I can’t help but conclude they have missed the point. Second point of reference for the same thing: season 1 Dawson’s Creek was one of the best teen-romance tales I’ve ever come across. Lots of people hated the way all the characters talked in thirty-something therapy-speak. These people have missed the point. That’s what Dawson’s Creek is.)

‘Love, Actually’ is for *ahem* grown-ups. It doesn’t have the teen-daydream emotional logic of ‘Dawson’ and ‘Titanic’, but it does have a non-rational story structure where the real world is just a backdrop to the stories of people discovering and committing themselves to emotional truths.

The crux of ‘Love…’ is an idea, repeated over and over again, that Christmas is a time for telling the truth. ‘Telling the truth’, of course, is explicitly developed as code for biting your lip, being brave, and admitting to someone that you fancy them.

And that makes this a fascinating movie. It’s being mass-released all over the world. For every person in the audience who is trying to work up the nerve to tell someone that what they really want for Christmas ‘is you’, it lays down a path, hands over the tools, pats them on the back and makes encouraging noises. It does everything but tip alcohol down their throat and spray on perfume/cologne. This movie is trying to make all those people screw up their courage and go for it.

‘Love…’ is trying to change the world. Movies don’t do this often. Certainly not big, mass-release blockbuster type movies. (‘Fight Club’ and ‘American Beauty’ are the only big examples I can think of in the last few years.) I am somewhat cautious about movies that attempt to prompt real change in their viewers’ lives, but by my lights, the message of ‘Love…’ is a grand one. I hope it works. I hope, all over the world, people who see this movie then get their nerve steadied and tell that special someone how they feel.

The planet would be a better place for it.

(By the way, if you are already hooked up with someone, as I am, there is still great enjoyment to be had from the movie. Well, specifically, from Bill Nighy. And the Andrew Lincoln-Keira Knightley storyline, for that matter. But I’ve written long enough.)