Love Actually was released on November 7, 2003 and we have been arguing about it ever since. Some hate it, some love it; some love it when they're in love but hate it when they're out of love.
The traditional critique of the film goes something like this: "It is a saccharine soulless picture that relies on an emotionally manipulative soundtrack and has nothing to say but somehow takes 136-minutes to say it." Variations of this critique may or may not include, "It is an evil film that tells people who are alone that they will never be happy."
Yawn.
The Atlantic's Chris Orr is more bold: His latest entry into the anti-Love canon requires us to once again, verily and merrily, and with the full weight of history on our shoulders, rise in its defense.
Orr makes a lot of very good points, but his central contention that "Love Actually is the least romantic film ever" is simply insane. I know insane and that's insane. (My insanity credentials? I have seen this movie probably 40 times.)
Orr writes, "Love Actually is exceptional in that it is not merely, like so many other entries in the [romantic comedy] genre, unromantic. Rather, it is emphatically, almost shockingly, anti-romantic."
"Anti-romantic!" Here's the thing: Love Actually is at its most basic level a call to romance. Not to love, necessarily, but to romance.
Also, all of you, everybody, stop comparing Love Actually to most other romantic comedies.Love Actually is only a traditional romantic comedy insofar as it is a film about romance that has humor. It does not have the structure required of the genre. To be honest, if you're going to compare it to any one film you should probably compare it to Crash, the working title of which I'd like to think was Racism, Actually.
If the theme of Crash is "We're all at least a little bit racist deep inside" the theme of Love Actually is "We're all a little crazily romantic deep inside."
Love Actually is, in fact, less a film about love as it is a film about people who think they are in love. Almost all of the stories center around people who either early on, or before the film even begins, figure out they're nuts about someone and then spend the five weeks before Christmas wondering, "What do I do now?" It's a bit like Hamlet but with romantic gestures instead of, you know, death.
Orr thinks it contains "at least three disturbing lessons about love":
"First, that love is overwhelmingly a product of physical attraction and requires virtually no verbal communication or intellectual/emotional affinity of any kind. Second, that the principal barrier to consummating a relationship is mustering the nerve to say "I love you"–preferably with some grand gesture–and that once you manage that, you're basically on the fast track to nuptial bliss. And third, that any actual obstacle to romantic fulfillment, however surmountable, is not worth the effort it would require to overcome."Let's knock these out quick.
by Ben Dreyfuss, Mother Jones | Read more:
Image: Universal Pictures
