Went to see new Brithope \u2018Love, Actually\u2019 t\u2019other night. (\u201cOh no!\u201d readers cry, \u201che\u2019s reduced to writing about movies already!\u201d Well, shush. I\u2019m going somewhere with this.)<\/p>\n
\u2018Love…\u2019 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\u2019t explicitly referenced in the opening monologue.<\/p>\n
But.<\/p>\n
\u2018Love…\u2019 does its po-mo po-faced, with characters taking their love lessons from movies (it ain\u2019t over till its over, it all comes together at the last possible moment, you have to run across town and call out someone\u2019s name before they slip out of your life forever). It even quotes about 10 seconds of \u2018Titanic\u2019 full-frame (I had a weird feeling that someone taped over the movie). The \u2018Titanic\u2019 riff is calculated. \u2018Love, Actually\u2019 has sold itself as the follow-on to \u2018Four Weddings and a Funeral\u2019 and \u2018Notting Hill\u2019, but that\u2019s just to get you in the door. It has set its sights far higher than that. \u2018Love, Actually\u2019 is intended as the spiritual successor to \u2018Titanic\u2019.<\/p>\n
(ASIDE: \u2018Titanic\u2019, of course, is the most recent adoptee of the Gone With The Wind Trophy for the Most Romantic Movie Of All Time. It\u2019s also a nice barometer for comprehending movie criticism.<\/p>\n
Now, I loved \u2018Titanic\u2019. I saw it three times on the big screen. I do not apologise for this. Sure, the characters are two-dimensional. Sure, it\u2019s 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\u2019s one hell of a tale. And it isn\u2019t that hard to buy in – this was the movie that broke records and made 3-hour films entirely mainstream, remember? (Another of Jim Cameron\u2019s multitiude of sins. But I digress.)<\/p>\n
Lots of smart people hated \u2018Titanic\u2019 but when they say why they hate it, most of the time at least, I can\u2019t help but conclude they have missed the point. Second point of reference for the same thing: season 1 Dawson\u2019s Creek was one of the best teen-romance tales I\u2019ve 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\u2019s what Dawson\u2019s Creek is.)<\/p>\n
\u2018Love, Actually\u2019 is for *ahem* grown-ups. It doesn\u2019t have the teen-daydream emotional logic of \u2018Dawson\u2019 and \u2018Titanic\u2019, 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.<\/p>\n
The crux of \u2018Love…\u2019 is an idea, repeated over and over again, that Christmas is a time for telling the truth. \u2018Telling the truth\u2019, of course, is explicitly developed as code for biting your lip, being brave, and admitting to someone that you fancy them.<\/p>\n
And that makes this a fascinating movie. It\u2019s 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 \u2018is you\u2019, 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.<\/p>\n
\u2018Love…\u2019 is trying to change the world. Movies don\u2019t do this often. Certainly not big, mass-release blockbuster type movies. (\u2018Fight Club\u2019 and \u2018American Beauty\u2019 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\u2019 lives, but by my lights, the message of \u2018Love…\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
The planet would be a better place for it.<\/p>\n
(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\u2019ve written long enough.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Went to see new Brithope \u2018Love, Actually\u2019 t\u2019other night. (\u201cOh no!\u201d readers cry, \u201che\u2019s reduced to writing about movies already!\u201d Well, shush. I\u2019m going somewhere with this.) \u2018Love…\u2019 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 … Continue reading ‘Love, actually’<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-a","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6028,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/6028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}