BEFORE: The size of my watch list is finally going down, for the first time this year. I've found that if I add only 2 or 3 movies a week, instead of 7, the list will get smaller - simple math, really. But each day of 2013 so far, I've found another movie on a topic coming up, or a new release that just had to be added, so no progress has been made until now. I'd like to get the list under 200 films, but it looks like it's going to take another couple of months to get there.
Linking picks the next film again - both Jake Gyllenhaal AND Anne Hathaway carry over from "Brokeback Mountain".
THE PLOT: A woman suffering from Parkinson's befriends a drug rep working for Pfizer against 1990s Pittsburgh backdrop.
AFTER: There used to be this little one panel cartoon on the comics page, called "Love Is..." - every day there would be these two little naked androgynous figures depicted, with a different definition each day of what it meant for them to be in love. But with a thousand different definitions and expressions of love, what is it at its core?
Love is a chemical reaction. Love is a physical act. Love is sacrifice, putting another person's needs ahead of your own. Love is never having to say you're sorry. Scratch that last one, love is saying you're sorry a lot, I don't know what I was thinking. Love is cooking somebody dinner, love is taking someone out to dinner. Love is finishing someone else's sentences, or knowing what they're thinking. Love is chasing after someone, love is letting them go.
Do you see where I'm going with this? Love is all those things, or perhaps it's none of those things. Maybe those are just the tangible things we point to in order to understand something that's intangible at best. But when you depict two characters in love, you can't just be all around it, you've got to nail it down at some point.
This is a film that tries to show love between two imperfect people, hoping that their imperfections will balance each other out somehow, or mesh in some way that's pleasing to the audience, but it's never really going to be a perfect fit, and in fact I'm not sure that it should be. Really, what are the chances that his overconfidence is going to balance out her insecurity? That his infidelities will be matched by her casualness toward fidelity? That her disease and roster of prescriptions will be so easily understood by a drug rep? It's all just a little too fitting somehow.
If he's so charming, but she sees through it, then how is she charmed by him anyway? If she's such a free spirit and refuses to be tied down, what makes him want to change his m.o. and do exactly that? Do we ever REALLY get inside these characters' heads? Do we want to? Is love that's initially based on quick sex, pity/self-pity or narcissism any less valid?
A lot of questions tonight, and very few answers. In fairness, you don't see too many movies that talk about the dangers of love when it goes well - how 30 or 40 years down the road, you might have to clean out your spouse's closet, and that's if you're lucky. You may end up taking care of a sick person, dressing them and feeding them, etc. But it sort of felt like the questions about the nature of love were used as sort of a narrative shortcut, in place of actual character development or evolution. Maybe someone was just using the tangibles of the situation to describe the intangible, but I've got my doubts.
Also starring Oliver Platt (last seen in "The Three Musketeers"), Josh Gad (last heard in "Marmaduke"), Hank Azaria (last seen in "Along Came Polly"), Gabriel Macht, with cameos from George Segal (last seen in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"), Jill Clayburgh (last seen in "Bridesmaids").
RATING: 4 out of 10 sample cases
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