Love and Happiness [movies]

As long as we’re talking about Once, it brought to mind some interesting links between other movies, most notably Before Sunset. If you haven’t seen it, then I’d suggest you stay out of this end of the pool. Fair warning.

In it, Hawke and Delpy are both coming back together after going years without speaking to each other in any capacity, both involved in “serious” relationships with other people (Hawke even has a son), and slowly the layers get peeled back to show their recognition, as real or illusory as it may be, that they are each other’s soul mates. There’s a scene in the movie that I always loved when they’re both on the boat, and Hawke is describing his idea of love…that it’s commitment to something bigger than ourselves, regardless of the true joy that a “soul mate” may bring. Linklater leaves the end of the movie ambiguous, though I think all of us suspect that they ended up together, at least for a fling, before Hawke and Delpy returned to their lives as they were before. When you hold it up to Once, (again, spoilers!)it’s pretty obvious that Hansard and Irglova are meant for each other, yet both are “happy” to return to their respective mates in the end, and are seemingly happier knowing that they’d met the other at least for the short period they shared.

If you compare it with a movie like Enchanted (spoilers!), seeing Giselle and Robert end up with each other, even though both had a good thing going for them otherwise (Giselle had a prince for god’s sake, and Robert…had…well, he had someone). In fact, even their respective others encourage them to go after each other, because they are soul mates, because they fall in love in a moment.

It’s telling that “running to your soul mate” is told in a fairy tale, while the other two mature movies push the reality that love, while very real, doesn’t always work out in the end. Sure, that’s an old movie maxim, but it’s weird to think that Once seems to celebrate the discovery of that other even if they don’t end up with each other. As opposed to threatening the other with “an eternity being with the one you don’t love,” as Enchanted pushes, it leaves off on a note of contentment. Somewhere in the middle, Hawke and Delpy are struggling with understanding the gift they have in each other, coming dangerously close to causing a lot of collateral damage around them. Hawke’s speech about commitment and dedication to something bigger than all of us always kind of resonated with me, but thinking of it with these other movies makes me wonder if he missed the mark a bit…that sometimes love is so big, it can’t be captured for more than the few fleeting moments, that it’s bound to end, and that sometimes it’s better to end up remembering that it exists, rather than focusing on the fact that it’s no longer here.

Or maybe no one knows what the hell they’re talking about.