Love Actually
Starring: Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Laura Linney, Keira Knightley, Martine McCutcheon, Bill Nighy, Rowan Atkinson, Colin Firth, Billy Bob Thornton, Alan Rickman
Directed and written by Richard Curtis. Distributed by Universal Pictures. Rated R for language, nudity, and sexuality.
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I’d love to think that Love Actually will become a film people will turn to to remember what love is, or what it takes to love.
One would think that there would be nothing new to define or describe the meaning of love. At least that is what I thought until the opening scene of passengers arriving into the waiting terminal where loved ones are waiting with open arms. Hugh Grant (playing the Prime Minister) delivers such a memorable and beautiful narrative that my weathered, calloused heart softened and I nearly cried. In this brief moment of merely five or so minutes, Richard Curtis’ delightful film was beginning to redefine love in this post-9/11 world.
And what better time to tell a story of love but at Christmas time. For just as we are told numerous times throughout the film, Christmas is truly the time of courage, to overcome our fears and to give or show tidings of love. If we cannot give or show our love at Christmas, then when will we, why would we?
Love Actually is told through an amazingly good ensemble of diverse characters and situations. To name a few--
The Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) starts his first day and falls head over heels for Natalie (Martine McCutcheon), one of his servants at 10 Downing Street.
A newly widowed husband, Daniel (Liam Neeson), recaptures the hope and spirit of love when he helps his ten year old step-son overcome his fears to tell a girl at school that he loves her.
The Prime Minister’s sister, Karen (Emma Thompson), tries to cope with the reality that her husband, Harry (Alan Rickman), is having an affair.
A sad story about Sarah who is madly in love with a co-worker but won’t let herself give into this love out of feeling obligated to wait upon her mentally ill brother.
And a crime novelist, Jamie (Colin Firth), after catching his brother with his lover, flees to Spain to his summer villa where, despite the language barrier, he falls in love with the maid.
At the core of Love Actually is music, which seems fitting. After all, music does play a significant role in life and love. Within the film, one of the characters, a once-a-musical-sensation-now-a-nobody rock star Billy Mack (Bill Nighy), records and releases a cheesy, crap-o-la remake of a song (with a music video reminiscent of Robert Palmer’s infamous Addicted to Love) that he has to market so that it can be the Christmas’ number one hit.
Mack is up against a young, flavor-of-the-month, boy-band called Blue. Nevertheless, his song becomes a catalyst for many of the characters, but primarily for Daniel’s ten year-old step son who decides to join the rock band performing "All I Want for Christmas is You" at the school’s Christmas concert so that the girl he loves (the lead vocalist of the band) will notice him.
One of the more subdued yet poignant moments in the film regarding music is when Karen has slipped back to her bedroom to listen to the Joanie Mitchell song "I Never Knew Love After All" from the CD she has just opened on Christmas Eve from her husband Harry. You see, she was not expecting this CD. She was expecting a piece of jewelry that she had discovered in his coat pocket. Who was the recipient of the expensive gold necklace?
This moment of realization is painful. Emma Thompson is remarkable during this seen, not bowing to a superficial, stock cry session but giving us a view of a proud and wise woman who is shattered but not defeated.
Love Actually is about many aspects of love. Watching this film, I’m reminded that we seem to realize what love truly is when we’ve lost it. And maybe, because we have a sense of what love is, what it feels like, what it has been, and what it should be, we’d do anything, even the wackiest of things, to have it back in our lives.
And, possibly even more than this-- even if life lays us flat out lonely and amongst the battlements of a war torn heart, hope and love can rise out of these ashes like the Phoenix. We just need to find our courage and then go after love. This is what Love Actually is about.
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