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Post by Gg on Feb 9, 2011 1:16:48 GMT 8
Just watching Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci in Julie & Julia
and it made me think of, however rarely they may occur, beautiful depictions of love in film and literature and what makes them interesting and inspiring in a way the typical "beautiful boy meets beautiful girl" romcom/chickflick formula misses.
In this case the unapologetic, complete embracing of the two as individuals with their own person-hood, and yet so in support and rapport. Paul drags Julia away to dance to save her from her own argument with her conservative, grim faced father, and all she has to say is, "oh, I'll never learn" to his gentle nudge and they in each other's embrace on the dance floor. It's the least of it, but it is a striking moment to me.
Another of my favorites is "Away We Go" (coincidently with Carmen Ejogo of Tube Tales) -- about a couple midst relationship, full of history and foibles and flaws and silliness and above all, really, really, good friendship, about to jump off the serious cliff of parenthood, while they see examples around them of the craziness and heartbreak and glory family can bring, and how it affects people as a couple.
Anyway, it's February, seemed an appropriate time (in many countries at least) to reflect on the not so clique stories of love.
What are your's?
Harold and Maude?
Katherine and Petruchio?
Penelope and Max?
Lars and his "real girl"?
Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson in "Easy A"? (OH MY GOD I loved them as that couple, and their family - if you haven't watch that movie just for those two!!! Though Emma Stone is articulate and witty as ever).
Feast of LOVE people! Feast of love. Not just for the pretty people, either.
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Post by Gg on Feb 9, 2011 2:51:19 GMT 8
"Away We Go"
Verona: Look, all we can do is be good
for this one baby.
We don't have control
over much else.
Burt: Will you marry me?
At least.
Verona: Never.
but I will never leave you.
Burt:Yeah.
Verona: I promise.
Burt: No, I know.
You...
You promised never to marry me
because you don't want to get married
without your parents there.
I get that.
You promise
never to leave me...
Do you promise to never leave
this baby that we are having?
Verona: I promise.
I do.
Do you promise
to stop talking about your ability to find
or not find my girl thingy after I give birth?
Burt: I do.
Do you promise
to let me cobble...
Verona: Carve.
Burt: ...to carve in my spare time,
and teach our daughter the lore
of the great Mississippi?
Verona: I do.
Do you promise never to
develop a thing for seahorses?
Burt: I do.
Verona: Good.
Burt: (EXHALES)
Do you promise to let our
daughter be fat or skinny
or any weight at all? Because we want
her to be happy, no matter what.
Being obsessed with weight is just
too cliché for our daughter.
Verona: Yes, I do.
Do you promise, when she talks,
you'll listen?
Like, really listen,
especially when she's scared?
And that her fights
will be your fights?
Burt: I do.
And do you promise that if I die some
embarrassing and boring death
that you're gonna tell our daughter
that her father was killed
by Russian soldiers in this intense
hand-to-hand combat
in an attempt to save the lives
of 850 Chechnyan orphans?
Verona: I do.
Chechnyan orphans. I do.
I do.
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Post by cat on Feb 9, 2011 3:58:00 GMT 8
Anyway, it's February, seemed an appropriate time (in many countries at least) to reflect on the not so clique stories of love. What are your's? Harold and Maude? Katherine and Petruchio? Penelope and Max? Lars and his "real girl"? I really like Tristan & Isolde, but I think that this film falls into the romcom/chickflick genre as it has two young and gorgeous leads in it. Although in saying that, I do love the storyline of this story, and how these two people wanted to be with each other, but fate / destiny had other ideas. I can't help but wonder if Shakespeare got his inspiration for Romeo & Juliet from this story. |
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Neferisis
Hans Afficionado
Just a dreamer holding on to what is precious: hope
Posts: 106
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Post by Neferisis on Feb 9, 2011 4:00:34 GMT 8
Great thread, Gg!
When I was fourteen, I fall in love with the novel "Love in the Time of Cholera", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez -recently adapted as a film, with great actors such as Javier Bardem and Benjamin Bratt. This novel confronted me firstly to think about the meaning of love, and its repercussion in a person's life. At that age, the character of Florentino Ariza made me wish I had someone who loved me with that sort of madness, passion, crying, love letters and all. It was so romantic!
However now, many years later, that I've seen the movie, and read the book again, it was an entire different experience to me. I could understand the other character who is the lifetime partner of the protagonist, Fermina Daza. Juvenal Urbino, the husband, represents the real love, the salt on the table, the embrace of the sick days, the laugh of the pleasant times. They share those things that are crude, and the boring days too. But they also partake of what is profound in a relationship: the sense that the other knows you as you are, virtues and defects, and still, in spite of and because of it... loves you.
"Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore."
(Love in the Time of Cholera)
Happy St. Valentine's day!
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Post by cat on Feb 9, 2011 4:09:27 GMT 8
Another love film favourite of mine is Truly Madly Deeply starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman. It shows all the sadness and the emotion of what all of us go through, when we lose that one special person in our life. And how that love really never dies. It is one of the most moving films I've ever seen. And I love it for that.
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Post by Gg on Feb 9, 2011 4:16:40 GMT 8
Cat; I think calling Tristan and Isolde a chick flick would be a mislabeling. A bit too philosophically challenging for that!!!! I think there have been a number of academic essays written asking the very question you have about Shakespeare's influence when writing Romeo and Juliet. Nothing new under heaven and earth, as they say, but it seems to me that anything creative is a reinvention of the wheel - even if that wheel is an icon as universal as "doomed love", but that it is the unique expression of it that makes "new". Nothing really wrong with that. Like translating a gestalt to a new generation in a creative form that generation can embrace. Even if "new" in this case is the audience of the late 1500's!!! DO you agree. Tristan and Isolde is such a staple of "the love story" how could Shakespeare have not been influenced by it!? I quite liked the casting in that film, so I have no complaints! They played their characters with intelligence and spirit and vulnerability! Don't misunderstand me though! My thought is that the "love was made for beauty queens" idea is really crap, in my experience. Everyone is worthy of it, and I celebrate when we get to see that played out in all its forms, literature and film, because I do believe it is both a reflection and an influence, particularly for 14 year old girls, reading, so instance "Love in the Time of Cholera" for the first time! I guess what I should say is it not about the "quality" of appearance of the two lovers... but the "quality" of the love.
Nef: I think it's brilliant to go back to things we connected with earlier in our lives and see how our perspective has changes. Particularly where love is concerned. Like "Love...Cholera", I think "Dr. Zhivago" is a piece of literature (and film, of course) whose meaning can really alter as we go through our lives and experiences with love and life and heartbreak and how that influences out perspective. And not just romantic love, but what family means. In both respects -- one love is perpetual, unshakable, and familial, if not as strictly passionate, and the other fire-y and like flame perhaps, maybe not completely extinguishable, but fleeting. As in "Like Water for Chocolate" when they finally are able to consummate their love, the flames of passion, literally, consumed them.
And what a beautiful quote -- not sexy, but true... so true and beautiful! What a love to aspire to -- one that begins with passion and grows into a true connection of souls.
I have a friend who contends that romcom/chickflix are to women, what porn-media is to men - in that they are both unrealistic, air brushed, sensational pieces of commerce made of something of value in its raw, untouched truth. That it sets us up for disappointment by over-sentimentalizing, or over-sensationalizing forms of "love" that are enough on their own. Do you guys think that's harsh?
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Post by Gg on Feb 9, 2011 5:16:04 GMT 8
Or as they say in "Valentines Day":
"There you have it! Young love. Full of Promise, full of hope, ignorant of reality"
I'm not that cynical, just heard it on HBO as I was changing loads of laundry...
it's only funny because I am so very very old.
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Post by lynette on Feb 9, 2011 5:55:34 GMT 8
It is quite a difficult question, I think it was a lot of movies filmed with the theme of love and it would be a long list. I can not give a definite answer, which the film I like to do .
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Post by cat on Feb 9, 2011 5:59:50 GMT 8
Cat; I think calling Tristan and Isolde a chick flick would be a mislabeling. A bit too philosophically challenging for that!!!! I think there have been a number of academic essays written asking the very question you have about Shakespeare's influence when writing Romeo and Juliet. Nothing new under heaven and earth, as they say, but it seems to me that anything creative is a reinvention of the wheel - even if that wheel is an icon as universal as "doomed love", but that it is the unique expression of it that makes "new". Nothing really wrong with that. Like translating a gestalt to a new generation in a creative form that generation can embrace. Even if "new" in this case is the audience of the late 1500's!!! DO you agree. Tristan and Isolde is such a staple of "the love story" how could Shakespeare have not been influenced by it!? I quite liked the casting in that film, so I have no complaints! They played their characters with intelligence and spirit and vulnerability! Don't misunderstand me though! My thought is that the "love was made for beauty queens" idea is really crap, in my experience. Everyone is worthy of it, and I celebrate when we get to see that played out in all its forms, literature and film, because I do believe it is both a reflection and an influence, particularly for 14 year old girls, reading, so instance "Love in the Time of Cholera" for the first time! I guess what I should say is it not about the "quality" of appearance of the two lovers... but the "quality" of the love. Gg, I agree with what you wrote, especially the part about anything “creative is a reinvention”. It would seem that because of so much “reinvention”, we never really move forward or away from a tried and tested formula. For example, I can a certain amount of “Romeo and Juliet” influence creeping through the current Twilight saga. And why not? It is the perfect tool to get the attention of 14 year old adolescent schoolgirls into believing that, yes, love can conquer the great divide where perhaps death has failed. Do you think this is where the "quality" of the love comes into play? Perhaps the adult version of this is the film Truly Madly Deeply, which I mentioned in an earlier post. |
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Post by Laura2102 on Feb 9, 2011 6:05:49 GMT 8
I struggle to think of particular films that conjure up an idea of love in a genuine natural way but there are certain pieces of music that make me think of love.
Somewhere In Time - John Barry
The end piece of music from Perfection from Black Swan is just absolutely beautiful.
And even the main title from Half Light does as well.
Totally not what the thread asked but just my input!
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Post by Gg on Feb 9, 2011 6:11:13 GMT 8
Let's open it up though. Not just romantic love, but love, not limited to sexual but all kinds. Life long friends love too. For example, in "under the Tuscan Sun" when" Patty" comes to see "Frances" after her girlfriend has left her, pregnant. She realizes Frances was on her way to see her new tall, dark lover and she says
"I refuse to ruin your lovelife"
Frances turns to her, smiles, and says
"Don't be stupid, Patty... you ARE my love life"
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Post by Gg on Feb 9, 2011 6:13:24 GMT 8
No don't stiffle yourself Laura! I like it!
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Neferisis
Hans Afficionado
Just a dreamer holding on to what is precious: hope
Posts: 106
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Post by Neferisis on Feb 9, 2011 7:19:43 GMT 8
Love, love love... I suspect this thread is going to become a VERY popular one, before and after St. Valentine's day! Actually, I believe sex and love are two separate events. Sexuality comes from the body, from its needs of perpetuating one's genes or of seeking corporal pleasure; whereas Love is an expression of the soul, a spiritual communion between our inner self and another's. One is the transcendence of the body, the other, the transcendence of the soul. None are to be blameworthy, both are different and very respectable expressions if practiced honestly. When one has the fortune of finding an "another" with whom to find compatibility of body and soul... that's when the fireworks go up! And I agree, there are very strong relationships of love that not necessarily are sexual and can last a lifetime or else. We don't know, but in a previous life a loved one could have been our father or son, a sister or a spouse (at least I believe so). Anyway, anywhere, but always love.  |
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Post by Gg on Feb 9, 2011 12:25:16 GMT 8
Hey Lynette! I thought of one that reminded me of you!
ONCE - a movie about an Irish musician who meets a Czech woman while performing on the street in Dublin, and realizes they are musical soulmates! Have you seen it?!
Another non-traditional story of love!
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Post by cat on Feb 10, 2011 16:17:58 GMT 8
I was thinking about what Laura wrote earlier about soundtracks being able to conjure up an idea of love, and for this I will have to go with the Doctor Zhivago soundtrack by Ludovico Einaudi. For me, this soundtrack has some of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard. It sums up all the emotion of meeting "the one", loving them, losing them and always remembering them for who they were, what they did and the way that they could change everything. Simply stunning!  |
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