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I regularly watch movies exploring this theme and I can say with my whole chest, that these five movies stayed with me, and altered my perspective on love and how I want to approach it.
About Time
THIS. This is the film that showed me all the right perspectives on life, love and especially, time.
Tim finds out at 21 that he can time travel at a New Years Eve party, deciding to rewrite the night into a better one. Moving from Cornwall to London to become a Lawyer, one night he meets Mary at an experimental restaurant where you eat in complete darkness. Mary is sat beside him and they hit it off, when they eventually leave, they meet eye-to-eye and Tim’s life changes in that very moment. As they go there separate ways he realises that he has just let the love of his life go, and uses his time travel ability to try to meet her again, redoing every attempt that went wrong. They eventually fall in love and Tim uses his power to fix mistakes affecting his relationship and family, but this goes incredibly wrong at a point and after finding out that his Father (who also has the ability to go back in time) is about to die, that he cannot go back in time to see him after his death due to the birth of his child (completely changing the child they have). As they go back in time together to when he was a kid, walk down the beach together, your face will be streaming with tears. This movie reminds you to look into and change your perspective on how beautiful the details of life are, and that it is not about changing the past - in the words of Tim “I just try to live every day as if i’ve deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life”.
Love Rosie
Life moves fast, and if you don’t articulate the way you feel about others, you could watch them slip away.
This movie tells the story of Rosie and her best friend Alex, as they navigate growing up together, leaving school and parting ways to follow their dreams. As fate often does, they find themselves coming back to each other, and unspoken words means that neither is on the same page on how they feel about the other, with Rosie or Alex supporting each other in the different relationships they face, but denying that they should really be together, but life gets in the way (especially the baby Rosie conceived on prom night with a rather douchey man, who gets a spectacular break-up scene). The ending of the film see’s Rosie achieve her lifelong dreams of running her own hotel, and Alex surprises her and finally confesses. If Rosie had remembered their first drunken kiss or if they both would of had the guts to ask each other to be their dates to prom, none of the years of chasing would have happened. So if you feel some way about another, just say it goddamn it (their loss if they decline).
500 Days of Summer
This Searchlight film taught me, that sometimes it is not meant to be, that people will come and go in our lives even if you want them desperately to stay. Love doesn’t pick and choose, you can’t force it, it will come in time. Meanwhile, don’t rely on fate and romanticism to paint a picture of someone, when that is not authentic. You cannot own someone and their emotions and feelings towards you.
Ah, the romance horror film, that perfectly captures our generations perspectives on love, and the divide between those whose perspective of it is crafted from the romanticism of it from movies, TV and music and those who believe such a thing cannot really exist, in the words of Summer, it’s a fantasy. As it states at the beginning of the film ‘this is not a love story’. Tom is a lover at heart, and when Summer, his office-crush, kisses him in the copy room (after a long period of yearning for her), he believes she is the one. One issue, she wants to keep it ‘casual’, as spoken in an IKEA showroom bed, and wants to take it slow, Tom who would make her his girlfriend in an instant, agrees. The story takes place going back in forth across the 500 days experienced since meeting Summer and losing her, with her asking to be just friends. It touches on the expectations and reality of love and juggles with how Summer is vilified in his eyes, when she made it clear she wanted casual. Finding out she is married, and having a heart-to-heart on a bench looking over the cityscape, Tom asks her why she chose him after having said she doesn’t believe in love, to which she replies “I knew” - “What I was never sure of with you”. To which you can feel his heart break into a million tiny pieces, she now believed in love and Tom had stopped. The ending of the film see’s him recognising that fate doesn’t exist, simply coincidence, and an encounter asking out a charming girl named “Autumn” indicates that he is moving into a new chapter of love into his life, looking into the barrel of the camera as if nodding to the fact summer will always be a frame of reference for him, and stay with him in his heart. Many ask who is in the wrong, and i think that’s a question you should ask your self after finishing the film.
The Wild Robot
We all have the capability to love and to love another, will help them spread their wings and fly. To love is to be kind, and patient.
Get the tissues ready, because this film had everyone in the cinema sobbing. Roz is a robot that is mistakenly dropped and left shipwrecked on a deserted island, programmed to serve a master, she tries (and fails) to find one, with all the animals seeing her as a monster of sorts. It’s not until she stumbles across a duck egg that hatches in her hands, that she meets the young duckling who becomes Brightbill. She has her new mission, it is to see him grow and eventually fly, before winter so he can survive. You watch as the Roz adapts to support Brightbill, keeping him safe from dangers and teaching him to fly. Even when he feels like an outcast, bullied for being different, Roz and a sneaky fox friend support him until he can fly, proving everyone wrong who doubted him. Roz is now alone and saves other animals from the brutal winter snowstorms, bringing them all together in peace - so when eventually Roz’s company comes back to take Roz to the factory, they all fight to keep the now wild robot, home. Roz evolves from an unfeeling robot to a nurturing Mother, and her love brings a deep sense of unity to the animals around her.
When Harry Met Sally
The most iconic and loved friends to lovers film. Love can take time and be unpredictable, you may not spot it’s potential at the beginning. It’s okay to not feel everything at first glance, and friendship is often the best foundation, a bedrock that can blossom into love if right. Someone should love you for all your quirks and the confession scene on New Years, articulates this in the most beautiful way. Once again, timing matters and it’s important to remember that sometimes people need to grow individually before they can be together.
Loved by Princess Diana, When Harry met Sally, tells the story of a pair of people who at first introduction, swear to never see each other in a romantic light, and keep bumping into each other across their lives. From reluctant acquaintances into great friends, they take down their boundaries and truly be themselves to the other person. Harry is as blunt as they come, and Sally’s high maintenance ordering habits can tick him off, as he ticks her off. Over time, they learn to love each others personalities and grow a bond, through different lovers until they finally make a move to each other, which scares them both after so many years of friendship. Just when you think everything is ruined, they come back together in the end when they communicate what they truly think about each other, and it clicks.
The iconic quote goes:
“I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
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