“Love is a many-splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love!” so says Ewan McGregor in Baz Luhrmann’s classic romantic tragedy, Moulin Rouge!
It’s a thought that has persisted in cinema for well over a century. Love is what motivates characters; it’s a dream they want to realize, a reality they have to face, the content of their musings in their nightly diary entries.
Decades of cinema have seen the nature of other genres completely overturned. More and more, horrors are gearing towards high-concept supernatural thrillers over human killers; comedies are willing to get raunchier, with a whole lot more swearing; action movies are only too eager to show off brutal set-pieces; and comic book movies and sci-fi films have the effects capable of making the unreal real.
But romance? How much has that changed? And how much do we really want it to? In celebration of today’s home entertainment release of Steve Pink’s romantic comedy, About Last Night, I’m taking a look back at the past fourteen years to consider love according to 21st century movies.
With the emergence of the Internet, the way in which we interact in our relationships has changed drastically in recent years. One need only step on a train and see an advert for Match.com, or any of a hundred different dating websites, to say nothing of recent success story Tinder, to appreciate just how different things have become.
In different aspects and in differing degrees, according to 21st century movies, love is both very different and very similar to its cinematic representations in decades past.
In the most obvious of ways, it’s exactly the same. More often than not, the guy still gets the girl, the girl still gets the guy, and they live happily ever after. So much so that that happily ever after can be repeated in the same franchise – see Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason – and nobody bats an eye.
So much is the same that it hardly merits discussion, because it’s the same tropes that make romantic comedies and dramas so predictable, yet also so successful. For many, cinema can be a way of escaping reality, and getting to see a perfect couple on the big screen allows us to vicariously experience that happiness; even if we go in search of more accurate representations, it’s still nice to see things end well more than every once in a while.
So what’s changed?
The complexities of love. Filmmakers like Derek Cianfrance, Spike Jonze, Sofia Coppola, Marc Webb, and Judd Apatow are willing to go the extra mile to show a wider picture of love than the traditional dichotomy of happy-together/sad-apart.
Blue Valentine as emblematic of this change. Cianfrance shows a portrait of a married couple, whose relationship is on the rocks. There is love, there is bitterness, and there is a need for space. The film feels so authentic not just because Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams’ performances are amazing, but because the script is a true reflection of countless marriages on the brink of dissolution.
Similarly, Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation sees Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray’s characters flirting with the idea of engaging in an extramarital affair. Johansson’s Charlotte got married young and is questioning her future with her husband, just as Murray’s Bob is finding his own decades-long marriage to have become tired over the years. That we are rooting for these two characters to come together through their escape into Tokyo speaks volumes of how our own connection to love has changed over the years, and how whilst adultery is still looked down upon in reality, in the world of films, there are often times when that’s too reductive a view to take as a member of the audience, when you feel love ought to come first over marriage.
In the past decade and a half, representations of love are both more willing and more able to show the physically intimate side of relationships; not just because sex sells and not just because ratings boards have grown more lenient (though that’s obviously a big part of being more able), but because that intimacy is an important part of many couples’ relationships, on and off the screen.
Anne Hathaway goes topless and Jake Gyllenhaal goes bottomless (albeit, from behind) in Edward Zwick’s powerful romantic comedy-drama, Love & Other Drugs, and there’s quite a steamy scene they share with Gyllenhaal positioned behind, something not often seen in mainstream cinema; Ryan Gosling performs a certain act upon Michelle Williams that sparked controversy in the US with the MPAA’s initial NC-17 Rating for Blue Valentine; Leslie Mann’s breasts are on show in This Is 40, another excellent portrait of a marriage; and Jason Segel has his heart broken whilst fully nude in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Another of the most important changes in mainstream distribution is the leaps and bounds we have made with greater acceptance of LGBT cinema. By no means is it complete, but strides have been made. The UK’s Peccadillo Pictures is a fine example of a distributor embracing this side of the industry, acquiring such acclaimed and frequently award-winning titles as Keep the Lights On, Stranger By the Lake, Weekend, and You and the Night.
Just as important is its recent willingness to tackle the impact mental health and degenerative disorders have in relationships on the big screen, with David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook and Zwick’s Love & Other Drugs significant recent highlights, along with the final scenes of Nick Cassavetes’ tear-jerking The Notebook.
Similarly, representations of love in films like recent hit Obvious Child, (500) Days of Summer, and even Love Actually are worth noting for their own breaking from the mould. Obvious Child gives us our first real abortion comedy that stands in contrast with Knocked Up, and it shows that you can still love and laugh in the face of pro-choice. In Love Actually, we see a guy who doesn’t get the girl, and as much as we love his ‘To me you are perfect sign’ – because we’re every bit the romantic that he is – he’s actually okay with not dissolving one of his best friends’ marriages, and that’s a good thing.
Above all – and this is one thing a lot of people I know don’t seem to appreciate, suggesting one of the main things the film is getting at goes completely over their heads – Zooey Deschanel’s titular character in (500) Days of Summer isn’t the evil, heart-breaking five-letter-word that Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tom makes her out to be. She tells him up-front that she’s not looking for anything serious from him, and it’s her right to change her mind on marriage whenever she pleases. The narrator says it best; it’s a story of boy meets girl, but it is not a love story.
Yet one thing that remains the same both on and off the screen, and which ultimately must change in the years to come to reflect growing trends in reality, is the stigma that is often attached to meeting people online. Theodore’s reluctance to tell his friends that he’s been dating his OS in Spike Jonze’s masterful Her is a perfect analogy for that stigma, albeit translated into a slightly futuristic scenario.
As a society, we have embraced technology. Politicians are on Twitter, actors and directors are on Facebook, and everyone is on Instagram sharing their holiday snaps and, for reasons that escape me, shots of their food. Films have embraced technology, and social media plays an integral role more and more frequently – Jon Favreau’s Chef is the latest example of such a success. But what no one seems to have embraced, in spite of the fact that it brings people together every day, is that simple fact – that it brings people together every day.
Yes, it’s more dramatic to have your characters interacting in real life; people don’t want to be watching a screen on which there is another screen, for the most part. But Gareth Edwards found a way to make a monster movie without needing that much monster footage on his debut feature; Shane Carruth made a time travel movie on a shoestring budget. Filmmakers are constantly devising creative workarounds for limitations like these, and love which embraces technology as playing an important role in building and sustaining relationships is surely on the horizon in 21st century movies. Spike Jonze has already achieved it with Her, and we can only hope it sets a precedent for the next eight and a half decades to come.
According to 21st century movies, love is a many-splendored thing, and it’s all we need.
It knows no boundaries, whether it comes in a relationship with an operating system with artificial intelligence or with the undead in a post-apocalyptic nightmarish scenario. It’s alive, regardless of pro-life or pro-choice.
It still ends happily more often than not, but the sad times are there for the willing. It’s intimate and it’s distant, heart-warming and crestfallen. It’s worth travelling back in time for, worth killing for, worth dying for.
It triumphs in the face of cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, bipolar disorder, HIV, AIDS, depression, and tragedy.
It grows stale with time as much as it blossoms with age. It’s a one-night stand that becomes something more.
It knows not race nor creed. It’s heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and more. It breaks labels and barriers, gives voice to the unheard.
It’s a triangle between Bella, Edward, and Jacob, with millions upon millions rooting for Bella and Edward, Bella and Jacob, and Edward and Jacob as well.
It’s crazy. It’s stupid. It’s love.
About Last Night is out on DVD today.
