Actually I really love Love Actually

So it seems a lot of people on my Facebook feed have felt the need lately to post articles ripping apart the movie Love Actually.  I suppose it makes up for the other friends who have posted a status or two about watching it or how they enjoy watching it this time of year.  But seriously, the critiques get under my skin.  Normally I’d indulge my impulse to live and let live and allow the vitriol against this movie to burn up and die out.  But now I have an idle moment with my coffee at the computer, so I thought I would post my way too long retort to these diatribes.

In truth, this is just going to be a list.  The ten reasons I really do like this movie.

1. The movie came out ten years ago.  2003.  That is significant to ME and why I like this movie.  That was two years after I moved back from London.  I was living in my little hometown in the middle of nowhere and very much aware of how unlike London that experience was to me.  (The fact I have moved back here is a twist of fate but nothing to do with this argument).  Love Actually is set in London.  And while a fantasy of life in London – there are no morning commutes on the Tube or seeing the workers at the crack of dawn mopping the sidewalks in Piccadilly -  the colors of the lights on London streets are enough to bring me back.  Seriously, even TWELVE years later, just the vision of that reminds me of how very happy I was in December 2001.  So yes, I watch that movie for the transition scenes.

2. Richard Curtis is my hero.  As a writer.  He is smart.  Rude.  Witty.  Humane.  Richard Curtis has crafted dialogue for some of my favorite films – including Notting Hill, which I watched as motivation to get my ducks in a row so I could live in London for a while.  Blackadder and The Vicar of Dibley have given me so so so so so much joy over the years.  Both on my own as I tie up rags in my hair and for a movie night with friends.  Dibley warms my heart over and over again.  Love Actually has that humour and sweetness and child-like goofiness.   As a total fan girl, I watch interviews with him whenever I can.  When this came out, I remember seeing him on Charlie Rose and articulating the opening thesis of this film.  That when the twin towers fell on 9/11 no one called to say mean or hurtful things.  They called to express messages of love.   That was his reaction to the world’s most recent tragedy.  The fact this writer was prompted to create a movie about love to counter the prejudices and war fever that was building (context of the Bush/Blair special relationship) in 2002 impresses me even more. 

3. Richard Curtis is my hero.  As a humanitarian.  Maybe this is 2.5, but I don’t want this blog to turn into an excessive diatribe.  He created Red Nose Day.  Comic Relief.  If you don’t know what it is, look it up.  Yes, he receives criticism for it.  For what it doesn’t address.  But, honestly, what other celebrity has created a day to raise money for the poor?  What American celebrity has ever done it?  What does this have to do with Love Actually?  Well, if you have the DVD, you would know that there was a lot that was left on the cutting room floor.  But hey, thanks to You Tube, I can post it here.

 

4. There is an interracial couple.  And the fact they are mixed race is never mentioned and is completely incidental.  I love that.  That’s how it should be. 

5. Someone has a sibling with mental illness.  Again, it is an incidental element to one of the plots.  It isn’t a very special episode detail.  Although, if you would like to see how Richard Curtis does write about it as a major plot element, I highly suggest watching Vincent and the Doctor, the highlight of Dr. Who’s 2010 season.  Both are honest depictions of what it is to love someone who lives with it.  Certainly Vicar of Dibley uses it as a point of humor… but there is a reality of the coping and the toll… and more importantly the life it becomes… and the way to continue to love and find the joy in spite of the joy it takes away.  It is a small gesture in a large script about something else, but I think it is great. 

6. There is a lot of anti-American sentiment in this movie.  I think it’s kind of funny, actually.  Especially when I see the more conservative of my friends sing its praises.  But maybe that shows they have as much self-deprecating laughter ability as I do.  The fact the American president is a tool.  The fact Curtis is basically saying the British Prime Minister needs to stand up to America.  And… even that ridiculous bar scene in Wisconsin where Colin goes… a. the thing about men with British accents is kind of… yeah, true… and b. having worked in an office entirely of men while in London, that stereotype of American women as slutty, ignorant Christians is kind of true, too.   I was annoyed by it at first… but not when they told me they thought I was Canadian.  And then after living there and coming back to America, I could see why they believed it.  I also told people I was Canadian when I went back in 2008. 

7. Okay, enough of the political plot points.  I like this movie because it is an excuse to get together with people and have some egg nog, decorate a tree, eat cookies.  And we’ve seen it enough that we can talk through it, but stop when there is a scene that just makes our heart sing. 

8. That scene after Keira Knightley realizes Andrew Lincoln (and I would much rather watch him in this than The Walking Dead) doesn’t hate her, but is secretly in love with her.  He walks out of his apartment.  Dido starts playing.  He zips up his sweater (which… American men don’t dress like British men.  And though this movie is ten years out of date, I do appreciate the chance to see the nuance of the style difference), walks a few steps, turns around, then turns around again, walks a few steps more and then jumps.  Brilliant non verbal acting.  I love that.  And I love that bit where Laura Linney tells her crush to wait a second so she can go around the corner and shake the nerves out of her.  I actually stole that and directed my Juliet to do that after Romeo exits the balcony scene.  Because… that is love.   It isn’t sexy and beautiful.  It is geeky and goofy and frustrating and maddening and so much energy you don’t know what to do with it.  Those are the best moments in the movie. 

9. The music.  I love the music.  Maybe you don’t.  But I do.  Even the bastardization that Bill Nighy sings.  But most especially The Beach Boys in the closing credits. 

10. If you are still with me, way to go.  And maybe this will just confirm what you think about the lemmings who watch this movie again and again, but I really do believe that love actually is all around.  Let me give you some context.  I am a severely jaded person when it comes to relationships.  I have spent most of my adult life running away from them.  I am the perpetually single friend… but weirdly enough, that gives me an often untold perspective.  I am the open ear that listens to friends as they fall in love, out of love, mend a broken heart, a lonely heart.  I don’t think it means I know anything, because some things need to be felt to be known.  I just see a lot of these details.  I also… having not had a marriage or a relationship that I would wish led to marriage… have seen how much love is in my life anyway.  My family.  My glorious friends.  Kids that I direct in a play.  And I’ll be honest, it took losing one of the greatest loves in my life – my grandmother – to wipe those lenses clear enough to start seeing the love that is here in my midst every single moment of the day.  Maybe, yes, you go to the airport and choose to only see the cranky tired people.  Fine.  Or a hospital and see the sick and the dying.  I do see the love of human connection.  I think it is realistic.  And the fact this is one movie that points it out, huzzah.

So that’s my long and the short of it.  But really, this is just a movie.  There are movies I dislike.  But unless that movie is representing an affront to a real person's history or propagating an institutionalized prejudice, I prefer to keep my disdain quiet.  I happen to like… love this movie.  And I just wanted to speak up for the reasons it makes me smile.

 But really, Richard Curtis did it so much better a few years ago.