Tuesday, June 7, 2011

"To Me, You Are Perfect"


Every once in awhile, a movie comes along and just knocks you off your feet. I'm talking once you finish watching it, you just want to tell the world about it and scream from the roof tops. Love Actually is a beautifully, elegant rumination on one of the most common conditions of life: being in love. Through its effortless performances and genuinely witty storylines, the film weaves together a number of stories that essentially describe how love is and how it should be.

For me at least, the best movies tend to be difficult to synopsize. Love Actually is a lot like that. You can say it's about love, but that tends to cheapen it's precious treatment of the subject. The film's beauty starts in it's wonderful opening, showing embraces of travelers and family members at the arrival gate of Heathrow airport. In short cuts, the film shows with its harsh lighting and crude long lens camera work the beauty that still remains in the smaller moments of love that aren't glamorized. It's at this moment that the film shows it's meaty core of simply wanting to be honest and real. They do an admirable job of just capturing reality, not forcing, which they continue later in the film with its fictional plot.

As the film progresses, we're introduced to the starkly different characters: a prime minister, a fashion consultant, a 10-year old and his grieving step dad, and an aging former pop star. They all are dodge in and out of each other's stories in an effective mosaic of occurrences. Recent films have tried to imitate this sort of vigenette-esque approach to one high-concept like Valentine's Day or He's Just Not that Into You. Love Actually, I'd imagine, is the blueprint from which these films attempted to draw from. But I think what those other films are missing is the substance of simplicity. Love Actually never dawdles from its central message of foolishness, courage, impetuousness, and hope. It doesn't cheapen it's delivery with tawdry storylines and improbable twists.

Through all these stories, the film centers upon one main message: Yes, there is love and as you get older, you learn that it's not what you thought it was. Still, in the end it's worth it, no matter how inconvenient.

I love Love Actually. And although it may be incredibly populist, I don't care. Please, check it out

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