Playing By Heart

Gorgeous music. Gorgeous setting. Gorgeous people.

I don't remember how I came across this movie that was released more than 10 years ago, in 1999.

It starts off with characters who are seemingly unconnected to each other and their relationships to one another are revealed at the end. The ending wasn't particularly mind-blowing but the entire film was enjoyable and heart-warming. It was about the journey of love, in a marriage, in a family, in the face of death. It successfully weaved multiple narratives and painted in broad strokes what love is.

Movies are like literature in literature. There's the grammar of film - the slow-moving pan, the delicate close-ups, the fast-forward transition of the city from day to night and night to day. And then there's the motion of the language - the witty, fast-paced repartee, bitter words spat like a bullet and softly-whispered, painfully honest confessions.

And Moby's Porcelain in the club scene. Wow.

The acting was amazing too. Sean Connery, Dennis Quaid, Ryan Philippe and Angelina Jolie were just some of the heavyweights that were roughing it out on screen.

It's worth multiple viewings. I shall watch it again, possibly this time with a pillow, no internet connection and a cup of hot chocolate.

The Time Traveller's Wife

The Time Traveller's Wife is good. Its premise is interesting and it was very well-written, resulting in a piece of work that was very well put together. It might all be very fictional, this guy who travel through time, but as my writing teacher would say, "Fuck you lah what not real. The emotions are real."

The casting of the two leads were awesome, Rachel McAdams (hey Mean Girls!) and Eric Bana. They are the kind of people who, in real life, aren't the glamorous look-at-me types and in this movie they are subtle but powerful in their acting.

It is a look at life as a whole, from childhood to being a young adult and then becoming matured and having a sense of worldliness. At the same time it brings across themes of love, devotion and compared to other films, a strong sense of family. Their daughter, the driving force for the entire last act, was angelic.

I wonder if anyone would give up their lives for a person who would disappear for periods of time without warning. To wait and stay devoted to somebody who might miss Christmas, or disappear just before a date and having to be alone. It's hard to make your world revolve around somebody who cannot be there all the time.

But Claire was so devoted. She never gave up. She managed to pull herself together through difficult times while being a pillar of strength for her husband.

Maybe all love takes is being strong enough to deal with whatever comes.