Monday, June 09, 2008

Actually, I Loved It

Caught a rom-com (read: romantic comedy) on TV the other night: Love Actually. Quite an impressive movie (a caveat: I would not have seen had it not been edited). All-star ensemble casts are endeavors that do not guarantee success, but this one worked. And worked well. What I was most impressed by was the adeptness with which the idea of love was handled. Love is a many splendid thing, to be sure. It wears many hats and guises. There's the classical categorization of love into 4 categories. Those were present in the movie, but so were the sub-fields. The unrequited loves. The marriage love. The romantic love that exists when the physical is stripped away and in fact, transcends that aspect of Eros (done in a very interesting and counter-intuitive way).

It was the child-like love that I most appreciated and enjoyed. The storyline ran through the movie like a spine -- suggesting the writer/directors belief that this was the love we are to show others. Born out of tragedy it presented the truest, simplest and ideal form of love. Love that has no fear, has no comprehension, has no concern for convention, no selfishness, no motives, no strings attached, no regrets. It was just love. And if it hurts in the end, so what: "Let's go get our heads kicked in by love." We saw, in that perspective, the freedom that love can give a person.

Love is a battlefield? Love lift us up where we belong? All you need is love? In the name of love? I'll be loving you forever? Love, love, love?

Yes. Actually.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What was the name of the movie? You did'nt say.

AaronG said...

Yes I did. I even used: a colon. But I'll leave it to you to discover. A sort of Where's Waldo with Words.

Anonymous said...

So I saw the latest installment of Indiana Jones. I won't spoil it for anyone, even if I say 'Kumba Ya.' I thought that what was going to happen...Whew! The movies ends really un-Hollywood like. This means that there is hope for Hollywood.
But the real issue is the uncreativity of Lucas and Spielberg. Come on guys! All that you could muster is an ET on 'roids..OOPS, that was a spoiler alert.
I liked the action, the hints from all three previous Indy Movies. Give credit to Ford...he does carry the movie..except for the part that that one nasty gets carried by the a...s (another spoiler alert).
With all the mysteries of life still on the planet, I fault Lucas and Speilberg for the story line. It may have been better for Indy to find that recently discoverd tribe in South America...Maybe he could have been looking for the villian who keeps on sending the world emails about cash he wants to give away. Now that's with hunting.