22 August 2009

haunted

That's the best word I can come up with for this...experience, this visceral reaction towards two films I've recently seen. One being (500) Days of Summer, the other, Revolutionary Road.

And what do I see?
A deathly look into what my future could be.
Why?


Well, first off, don't read this post if you don't want spoilers.

Revolutionary Road follows a married couple who see two different things when they envision at what their lives together could look like. "It takes courage to live the life you want," she says. She dies as she tries. She tries in the wrong way, but she certainly has the courage. Paris wasn't such a childish idea. It was heaven. It was original and different and lovely. RR is the story I'm scared of. It's the story that makes me run away and never ever want to touch that mystery known as marriage, because I see in film and in real life how it can tear your soul to pieces.

(500) Days recounts moments of a relationship between a young man and a young woman over the course of 500 days. The narrator tells us in the very beginning that it's not a love story, and it takes the entire 95 minutes of the film for me to believe this. I'm rooting for them and it all comes to nothing. Well, maybe just on his side. She says she found her fairy tale, even though she didn't believe they were real. But it leaves him in the dust, very misused.

They say that film is the new art form. They say that art reflects life. It's all an illusion really. Life is the everything and the nothing found on film. Rom-coms do nothing but increase the grandeur of the illusion, really. Yet sometimes I want them to make me believe in the lie. Because when these films, such as (500) Days and RR, come around that tout the same cynical perspective (that like Elizabeth though I profess it, it is not my own), I feel like something has died. Maybe if we just clap a little louder...?

I've come to the age where everyone around me is getting married and I think "Why? Why do you do this? Don't you know what you are getting yourself into?" Just this month, not even a full month, only 22 days, I have attended 1 wedding and have heard about 5 weddings and 3 engagements of people whom I know. Among those who are already married, I've heard about babies. Yet, I've heard stories of divorce that are just as rampant, however they are much more disturbing.

Yet, I envy them. I want a taste of that sweetness that has twice tempted my lips, but my story seems to end like Tom's: left in the dust.


I want so much more than the illusions brought to my door. I want so much more than a facade of celebration. I want so much more than they've got planned.

Oh, these paper bullets of the brain.

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