When love dies
Humans are perhaps the only species that are cognizant of their impending demise. The same evolution that developed consciousness has turned us into quakers. We can’t accept that the universe was not made for us, and that there is no special meaning in our being here.
We are constantly looking at ways to prolong life or find an afterlife. In the kingdom of god, or here on earth, reduxed. We have to learn to let go and accept death. It is all transient. Enjoy it while it lasts. Let it go mate.
This fear of things ending makes us cling to beliefs and ideas even after they have outlived their usefulness. We want to stop evolution in its tracks, believing falsely that we have attained some perfect sentience. We want to believe in millenia old ideas on how to live, like religion, or the more recent ideas of communism and capitalism on how to make a living. Move on and create something new. An idea for the times, and when it doesn’t work, let it go mate.
The hardest thing we have trouble accepting is the end of the affair. It was good while it lasted, but it’s no more. Knowing that it will all come to an end does not make it any easier to deal with, but it’s a start. But don’t let that turn you into an unfeeling automaton and shy you away from love.
Live it, and when it’s over, dust yisself, and git back on that saddle.
Cinema is the most expressive medium (till date) that allows you to experience complex emotions like love. I had trouble for the longest time believing people falling in love on screen. It always felt contrived. It’s always about that magical look, the face in the crowd, the meetcute, the flirt. As a writer, I abhorred and feared writing these scenes because I did not believe them. I had not internalized the feeling of falling in love. I avoided these and generally stayed away from romance. So much easier to come up with a cool way of killing someone.
If I can’t believe people falling in love, can I believe people falling out of love? I could experience and feel people not being in love, on screen and in life, but that moment when it all started to unravel, could I believe it? Would you believe it if it was one moment? Or if it was a deterministic series of moments all carefully calibrated to elicit that emotion of falling out of love.
What is the place where love goes to die? Is it always marriage? Is it expectation or lack of? I don’t know, but movies are a great way to examine that.
You are a master filmmaker, if you can capture that on celluloid. Right off the bat, there’s Eternal Sunshine. Is there a movie that has better captured the feeling of trying to forget someone you loved because they don’t love you any more? How sweet and sad was it to see Carrey trying desperately to save memories of his love by hiding it in unexpected places? I have watched this movie only once, and I don’t wanna watch it again for fear of understanding exactly what happened and getting all analytical about it. The truth will enslave you.
On Mitch’s recommendation, I watched two other films that nailed it – 5×2 (French) and Reconstruction (Danish).
Reconstruction is a film I can’t describe. It was like watching an opera where the emotion is carried through the music, visuals, and arias without having to understand the actual meaning of the words. I did not understand it at all, but i felt the torture of falling in love, and the rejection of the other person falling out of love. Christoffer Boe is such a fantastic filmmaker, with such command over the medium, I am in awe. This is his first film.
5×2 has a couple at divorce proceedings and tells the story in reverse chronological order to the time they met. By using 5 vignettes from their life, you are never told why exactly things happened the way they did, the major confrontations all seem to have happened offscreen, but you know the critical incidents in their life that may have guided their actions, and how they fell out of love with each other. In the beginning, you think, the guy’s such a dick, and as the story progresses, the girl seems to be at fault. But neither is the case. They were human and fell out of love and hurt each other, but not before they fell in love. The last shot holds on the newly met couple for an interminable amount of time, as they walk into the sunset, in the ocean, slowly coming closer together, and finally holding hands, as the sun ducks behind mountains. A true happy beginning for a miserable ending.
The greatest thing we as humans can experience is love. The wisest thing we can do is experience it more than once. There’s plenty of love to go around.
Let it go mate.
Tags: World Cinema
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
awesome post. salut.
Dabba- I know you are getting married soon…don’t tell this was to impress your fiance…!
Thanks for this Dabba..have you ever wondered why it’s called ‘falling’ in love??
Also, any other good recos would be welcome, love or non-love related..
I enjoyed reading this.
We shall come…
We shall go…
But only love shall remain…
Unless ofcourse, we are the last generation to experience love!
‘5×2′ is patiently sitting in my wardrobe.
It’s been there for around 4years!
Need to watch it.
I’m so glad u mentioned ‘Reconstruction’ though.
It was brilliant!
Loved it!
The performances were fabulous and the direction was spellbinding!
No one ever mentions that film.
So, thankyou for bringing that up :-)
Brilliant post Dabba!!
This “What is the place where love goes to die? Is it always marriage?” is absolutely my favorite line of the month! But seriously, what an insightful look at love in movies. And now I’ll be adding those two films to my list of must-watch!
What’ve you written goes beyond reccomending the 2 films. thats what i liked…
Thanks for this beautifully written piece. It’s almost like poetry.
nice written post
This is an extremely beautiful post.
Dabba: loved it. It answered the question that ANu Mallik and Alisha Chinai raised a few years back – “What is Love? Kya hai pyaar?”
p.s: What happens when you love a post?
Had to read this a couple of times, Dabba. It set me thinking about love etc. The more you think about love, the more you fall in love. And Love never dies, it just fades away.
A film maker can never be short of ideas on making a film based on love. There are a 100,000 stories waiting to be told on love and it’s failures.
“I had trouble for the longest time believing people falling in love on screen. It always felt contrived. It’s always about that magical look, the face in the crowd, the meetcute, the flirt.”
So true! Totally agree with you.
You think it will be OK with your fiancee if I say I have fallen in love with you?
5 X 2 sounds like “lets talk” somehwat
wow …. fabulous beginning …. amazing middle …. and perfect ending.
(@ magik thanks for the recommendation)
“Live it, and when it’s over, dust yisself, and git back on that saddle.” the beginning talks about letting go ….. the end talks about letting go but this one statement, in the middle, doesnt say let it go !!!
Ofcourse falling out of love and falling in love back again is what every couple do in the course of their marriage. Some have the guts to do it till their death. Some lack it and break out of it to seek a new partner and begin the cycle all over again. Looks like one has to first love and accept him/herself before expecting another person to love him/her. Love to me looks like an awesome tool of self discovery – sometimes your partner is the best person to point out your glaring gaffes and at sometimes point your strengths and inner beauty which you thought you never possessed. With the right partner one feels no need to search for the ‘AXE’(;-)).
However the aspects of capturing them in their totality is indeed a daunting task – be it in writing or in a film. Is it not the soul that is involved – with the cooperation of body and mind. such an unhearable orchestra is indeed hard to capture.
As Arthi pointed out going beyond the excuse of recommending two films that must certainly be awesome, you have captured some subtle nuances in the evolution of love itself aptly.
Like the concept, your post too is elegant!!
Thanks for the nicely written piece.