Movies on the Theme of Love
To celebrate St. Valentine's Day, movies selected here portray the various manifestations of love. "Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination," so says Voltaire. Many movies harp on man/woman love; passionate love, obsessive love, unrequitted love, a theme poignantly expressed in Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso and Federico Fellini's La Strada, repressive love that was recounted so exquisitely by Wong Kar Wai in his movies Happy Together and In the Mood for Love, decietful love that leads to destruction and ruin, detailed in Luchino Visconti's Senso and Josef von Sternberg's Blue Angel. Then there is also parental love, comically yet succinctly depicted by Ang Lee in The Wedding Banquet. Reciprocally, there is filial piety for no better term than the love of children of their parents. Wu Tian-Ming's King of Masks and Niki Caro's The Whale Rider are examples that glorify such love. Grieving over the loss of love and of loved ones is demonstrated with sensitivity and grace in Nanni Moretti's The Son's Room and Pedro Almodóvar's All about My Mother. Ultimately, there is the uncompromising and unconditional love of life itself. In Marleen Gorris's Antonia's Line, the protagonist Antonia, a middle-aged widow, embraces life with compassion and courage. At the end her love of life enables her not just to love her family, her neighbors, the Mother Earth that forever replenishes and sustains life, but also to forgive her enemies and even those who committed heinous crimes and gross injustices against her. Finally she looks upon her death not as an denouement, but a transition, a continuation and a new chapter.
While we are savouring some of these movies, let us remind ourselves of this quotation from D. H. Lawrence "Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration" .
Hing Wu
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If there is a movies that is close to perfection in the direction, acting, cinematography, sound track and details to the place and time when the event took place, this is it. The story is simple enough, a man and a woman, both married to spouses who were engaged in extramarital affair, were neighbors. They were amorously attracted to each other. Yet due to the social constraint and the individuals' sense of value, they smoldered their passion with longing and anguish. In spite of the scarcity of dialogue and action, the viewer finds oneself living through their emotions and their deep love and mutual admiration. Their oppressed and unconsummated love is portrayed with such exquisiteness and understanding that the viewer, not due to any deviation of character, almost wish that their relationship should just stay that way. Another major attraction is Cheung Man Yuk's wardrobe. She wears a different chengsam in every scene. The dazzling colors and patterns are simply breathtaking. With In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar Wai has certainly created "a thing of beauty is a joy forever."
A delightful and enchanting movie of love weaved with charm and innocence. Amélie, a shy, lonely girl brought up by a fervently religious and neurotic mother and a taciturn father, hardly ever experienced love. After the mother's death, the father further retreated into complete isolation and desolate loneliness. By some accident, Amélie decided to bring joy and do good deeds to people she encounters. Hence, by skillfully calling her father's attention to a garden gnome, she was able to gradually awaken him to the excitement of traveling and exploration. With some artful maneuvering, she ignites the passion of two cranky regulars towards each other at the café where she works. She then punishes the storeowner who treats his worker with cruelty and contempt by sneaking into his apartment and planted mischievous traps, thus turning the nasty man's life upside down. He in turns begins to doubt whether he is so much smarter than the person to whom he has inflicted so much pain and insult. At last, for the humble and modest Amélie, her most daunting challenge is trying to meet the man whom she secretly falls for. Amélie kindles the childlike spontaneity in us that has long been buried by the tedium of our mundane existence. It was observed that when the movie first came in Paris, the people there suddenly found themselves treating each other much kinder! Such is the impact of this little gem of kindness and love.
Shortly after World War II, the widowed Antonia, bringing along her daughter, returned to the Dutch village where she grew up. They were greeted with suspicion and hostility by the provincial folks. The men in the village spend most of their time in the tavern drinking and often ended up in brawls, while their wives toil in the farms and are over-burdened with household chores, often suffer in desolate loneliness and submissive silence. The independent and forthright Antonia refused to be intimidated by the most feared bully among them. She whole-heartedly supports her avant-garde daughter who has chosen to be a single mother. By her compassion, strength, and courage, she was able to overcome the prejudices and brought back dignity and harmony to the village that was riddled with violence, scandal and tragedies. As generous and forgiving as the Mother Earth, Antionia was an inspiration and a beacon to all those around her. She has transformed a place that was shrouded in dark secrets and distrust into a community filled with gaiety and love. This love of life and humanity is perhaps the greatest love of all.
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