《爱很怪》：Love is strange,Love is Love
"Love is weird", just looking at the name seems to indicate its particularity. Well, it's an LGBT-themed story. In the film, the elderly gay Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) have been together for 39 years, and after same-sex marriage is legal in New York State, they have a romantic wedding in the presence of relatives and friends. Unexpectedly, this move caused trouble for the couple, and the church school excused George. The two people, who are in a worrying financial situation, have no choice but to sell the house in the loan and live in the homes of their relatives and friends, and the promises of each other are tested. Same-sex love, old separation, but it is such an unusual love, but it returns to the plain and warm background of life itself. In just one and a half hours, time flows slowly, and George and Ben's love is silent and deep, deeply touching, forgetting that it is strange, it is no different from what you and I have experienced.
Compared with the era experienced by Turing and Foucault, people's attitudes towards same-sex love have become more and more open and ordinary. But we must admit that the gay community is still outside the mainstream of society and has not yet achieved true equality. From this point of view, it is still a "strange" love. So, even though the government had legalized same-sex marriage, George's sexual orientation and private life were not tolerated by the disciplined church schools, and a private decision (marriage) that had nothing to do with others made him lose his job. His nephew Joey was initially unfriendly to Ben because the interlopers had ruined the original state of life and partly because of their fear of his sexuality. And Elliot, who frankly accepts the identity of his uncle Ben's comrade, is furious when he sees his son Joey and his friends of the same sex being very close.
Although many of the details in the film point to the particularity of same-sex love, Ben and George's emotional writing is not curious. At first, when I saw the poster of the movie, I once thought it would be the routine of the British drama "The Boss of the Need for Quality", and secretly wondered whether the film showing the elderly comrades would have such a large-scale shot as "Lan Yu" and "Adele's Life" (the picture is too beautiful to watch @-@). However, director Erasachs is a pleasant surprise, and in this film, the "curious" gaze is not present.
The film does not deliberately cater to people's imagination of the gay community, nor does it highlight the lust between the same sex. After the romantic and poetic warm-colored wedding, the main space is devoted to the dilemma of the life of the wife living in two places and relying on each other spiritually. And true life is revealed in choices, distances, and events. In the film, Ben, who lives in his nephew's house, feels the unfriendly atmosphere around him, and the nephew who is in adolescence and is confused about sex and love has a same-sex friend, but he is full of fear for his comrades, and he projects his bad temper on this uninvited guest, while the polite and courteous niece and daughter-in-law try to be as thoughtful as possible, or can't help but vent all her dissatisfaction with Ben in the quarrel with her husband. George, who lives elsewhere, is not much better, lonely and unemployed all around him, and he always puts himself in the crowd of people, but he can't fit in. At a party, he meets an invitation from a strange kind of person, and he says he likes someone. At the end of the film, Ben quietly passes away, and George lives alone in the newly rented apartment. Having slowly matured and accepted Ben, Joey sent him unfinished paintings from his lifetime, and the pictures in his pen became the medium for George's endless thoughts. A pair of partners who have stayed together for most of their lives, old and deep but unable to fulfill the promise of each other, that kind of helplessness, sadness and the brightness of the wedding at the beginning of the formation of a strong contrast, let people feel the difficulty of love, touched the persistence of the old two.
During the movie, I was touched by the old couple several times: Ben, who was unhappy at his nephew's house, called George and said "I miss you"; George and Ben lay on the bunk bed chatting, emotionally, George climbed onto Ben's small bed, and the two old men hugged each other and slept; George and Ben went out on a date, holding each other's hands tightly in the concert hall, slowing down side by side in the dark street, as if there was no end to the road... Here the director adheres to the principle of calmness and minimalism, and the whole film not only does not have the eye-catching expression of love, but also the unfinished look back when the old couple dated and broke up. The fixed camera position and long lens when the old two get along give the time in the lens a sense of turbulent passage, and the indifferent soundtrack chemistry thickens the concentration of the feelings of the old two. The camera moves slowly, as if to let people touch the precious texture of the long stream of love. At that time, I couldn't help but think of my grandparents, who went to the market every morning holding hands to buy vegetables, and created their own two mahjong to pass the afternoon... Love in old age, this is the authentic taste of life, has nothing to do with gender.
In the film, Ben once asks Joey "You know what love is?" I thought maybe that's exactly what the director was after. Love is strange. I think I've found the answer.