Not long before Christmas I came across a video about "the crimes of" the movie, Love Actually. But then again, there is actually pretty fashionable to hate the movie. Just put the words "Why people hate the movie Love Actually" in google search and you'll get hordes of articles, blogposts, reddit threads and whatnot on the topic.
I remember when the movie came out I've seen it in the theater with a friend of mine and I loved it and I love it ever since.
Is it a perfect movie? No. Is it kind of dated? Kind of yes. Could it be made today with the same succes? Probably not.
The thing is, that I not think that we should evaluate things that were done twentysome years ago with today's standards. Just as we should not evaluate arts, like novels written decades or hundreds of years ago with today's standards. Do we think about slavery differently than people did when Gone with the Wind was written? Yes. Does it make that book less good? NO. Do we think about women and the life-goals of women than people did around 1800 when Jane Austen written her books? Yes. Does it make her books less good? No.
Life was different, and people were thinking differently, and thinking that it is awful, and/or trying to erase it by hating / cancelling / not talking about them will not make it unhappen.
Furthermore, I also think that many people who hate this movie, simply do not understand it. They hate how Alan Rickman's caracter cheated on Emma Thompson's caracter, how an other caracter was head over heels with his friend's wife, etc.
But then, if the movie had perfect people, perfect relationships, perfect love, what would the movie be about? Why should it be made at all?
People, relationships are not perfect. Love, actually, is not perfect.
Because people hurt each other. People cheat on each other. People fell in love with persons they should not. People obsess about people they think they are in love with. People love people who don't love us back. People fall in love with people whom they can't talk with. There are all kinds of love. Hurtful love. Hugh Grant said this about the movie, and like that argument, though I rather think of the movie as a movie about all kinds of love, Hurtful love. Imperfect love, and imperfect people.
There is the argument against the movie that certain situations are imbelievable. The kiddo learning to play the drums in 5 weeks? The widowed father bumping into Claudia Schiffer at the airport? The prime minister knocking on the doors? The kiddo running through security lines?
Come on, it is a Christmas movie! Did you ever heard the term the "willing suspension of disbelief"? Do we believe that Neo is bending out of the way of a bullet? Of course if we knowingly think it through, not. Does it still makes a good movie? Yes.
There are great moments in the movie, that became classic: Emma Thompson crying and then straightening the bed, Hugh Grant dancing, Colin Firth falling in the lake (of which I think it is a very subtle reference of his other, classic lake moment in Pride and Prejudice), and I could go on.
I love the movie, and I love to put it on, while I am knitting the last of Christmas presents, or sewing on the last buttons of my dress for the event the day after Christmas.
If you are one of those people who like to judge things (especially art) by today standards, who hate movies because people are not perfect in them, who hate when there are artistic exaggerations in a move, etc, then there is the perfect solution: Do not watch it. It is even more easily avoidable, than listening to certain Christmas songs.
For the rest of us, let's enjoy the hell out of its imperfectness.
No comments:
Post a Comment