Every Christmas season, people obviously start discussing and watching any media even vaguely related to the holiday season. Love Actually is one of those clear Christmas classics that I’ve seen a few times and would be fine with watching again. I thought most people liked the movie too, and I guess they did, in the past tense. For years now, I’ve only seen commentary and criticism calling the movie trash, stupid, unrealistic and “not suitable for the modern age”.
People will list the (many) storylines in the movie and how lots of them contain “red flags”. How several of them show a relationship between two people with a power imbalance, such as employer and employee. How all of it is wrong, inappropriate, and not about “true love” at all.
For example, take the guy who was secretly in love with Juliet (played by Keira Knightley) for years. But then she marries his best friend. He basically only films her during the wedding, and when she finds out, they are both devastated. Near the end of the film, he visits her home to do the famous scene with the flashcards, where he silently explains how much he’s always loved her.
Though the storyline is completely understandable and that scene incredibly famous, even to people who never saw the film or the context, people heavily criticize this now. He is a stalker, or obsessed. He is “trying to steal his best friend’s wife”. The movie, so they say, would have been way better if it had started with accepting he can’t have her, then finding a different path towards love the rest of the movie.
And they are right, partially! It is a bit of an obsession to only film the bride. It is abnormal to show up at the home and still profess your love anyway. This is not the same, however, as “trying to steal her” (which he objectively isn’t doing). Even if he were aggressively chasing her (which he objectively isn’t doing), that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the plot. This is not an endorsement from the moviemaker telling everyone to act like that.
People seem to forget that stories are not showing idealized, perfect worlds. The entire idea of a story is that something is wrong. There’s an extraordinary situation, there’s a weird character, there’s a conflict, and now we’ll follow the characters as they try to solve it. It’s about growth: from an imperfect person to, hopefully, a slightly wiser person. They’re a made-up world trying to bring entertainment, laughter, sadness, or just interesting perspectives on a theme. Most of the time, barely anything inside the story actually aligns with the author’s view or opinions.
Love Actually is a movie about love. About how weird it can get, how it can be found in odd locations, how it can go wrong, how not everyone gets a happy ending.
It’s in the friggin’ title! “Love, actually, is all around.”
Pretty much all the story lines in the movie are about imperfect characters. They make mistakes, they are blinded by love (or blind to it), they cheat, there is a power imbalance, there are communication issues. This is not an issue, or a mistake, or trash writing. This is not something to erase. This is what makes it a story.
It’s probably what makes it appealing to so many, and so memorable. Love Actually is 2.5 hours of memorable scenes, recognizable conversations or characters, all mixed together in a fun ride that explores “love” in many ways. I’ve only seen the movie perhaps 3 times, maybe 4. But I remember most of it. I sometimes make jokes referencing it. Because the movie is unlike anything else. It’s an extremely ambitious, creative, experimental type of story that was executed very well.
I find this disheartening, actually. How so many people these days expect a movie to just align with their utopic worldview, from start to finish, and anything else is terrible. Characters should be perfect (from the start). Relationships should follow my personal ten-step plan to dating, and should have no red flags, because otherwise they are obviously loving each other the wrong way!
I’m terrified by how people seem less and less able to separate fiction from fact—to separate a story from what an author is supposedly endorsing or promoting.
In many ways, Love Actually is an anti-romcom. It has cleverly disguised itself as a romantic family Christmas movie, while including lots of storylines that actually don’t end well or show a darker side of love. But nowadays, people only take stories extremely literally. And if the literal events aren’t the thing they would have done (or would call “appropriate”), then it’s bad by default.
People make mistakes. People cheat. People fall in love with someone they can’t have, but still want to desperately express that love (at least once). Is that bad? Half the world says yes and that the flashcard scene was inappropriate, while the other half says no and calls it endearing and a good example of men actually expressing emotions. Most of all, it doesn’t matter, because the movie is not a government-issued instruction guide on how you must deal with love.
Young boys do stupid stuff to get the attention of a girl, while also being so confident that they think the girl must love them back, of course. It’s all so recognizable. It’s human. It’s diverse. It’s interesting, and funny, and executed with a great balance of silliness and seriousness.
I don’t think Love Actually is a “perfect movie” by any means. It’s quite good, not great. I would not want to watch it again every single year, just once in a while. I’m a very practical and logical person, so I’m also not easily swept up by melodramatic sappy love stories.
Which is perhaps why this is one of the only romantically inclined movies I actually enjoyed since I was young. Because, let me repeat: it is NOT a movie about how love is perfect and will save us all, and the characters are infallibly hot and smart. It’s just about many facets of love/relationships.
It’s not perfect, but it is a good movie and all such criticisms against it are complete nonsense. People have no issue with incomprehensible plot, or unlikeable characters, or boring scenes. For example, you could say the film has just one or two storylines too many, which makes it a bit messy structurally. And leaves little time to delve deeper into other (perhaps more interesting) storylines.
Interestingly, there were a handful more storylines in the original draft, but they were cut out. The final film we got was already a streamlined version of the original ambitious idea :p
I wouldn’t be surprised if the author of Love Actually is hyperactive. To me, a film with this many storylines is just “normal”. After seeing it for the first time as a kid, I was like “well that explains why all the other movies are so BORING and SIMPLISTIC”.
With my own writing work, I’ve always struggled to streamline it and keep the number of subplots down too. The first time I submitted a manuscript to a writing contest, I had worked REALLY hard to reduce the subplots to just 5 or 6 (“basically nothing”, I heard myself say) … and still received the feedback, by most of the judges, that there was too much going on.
But the criticisms found online, by and large, aren’t arguments against weak story structure or writing. About lack of entertainment or stilted dialogue. No, they have issue with the fact that the content does not align with their (current) idea of perfect love, and then call the movie bad.
And I won’t accept it! Not for any story, or any piece of art!
I merely used Love Actually as an example here. Because it’s that time of year, most people know it, and it’s a good example.
But it’s true for any story. Recently, I researched and wrote some “cozy crime” stories. That genre is literally defined as “it’s about a terrible murder, but let’s keep a nice and cozy vibe about it”. It has been one of the most popular genres (both books and film) for decades now. It’s not even close.
Do all these readers think murder is a joke? Do they think the author is telling them to go murder people, or become amateur sleuths trampling through crime scenes? Of course not! Everyone knows that the entire point is to provide escapism as well as satisfaction by serving justice after a crime. You can do that with tension and action (such as spy movies), or you can do it in a more comfortable and character-focused way (such as cozy crime). Why are people sometimes able to understand the fiction distinction, and sometimes not?
If we start treating these criticisms as actually having validity, we’ll soon be left with either only one story (that is boring and uninspired), or with no (shared) stories at all (because everyone’s personal views differ). We would have no Christmas movie left to watch. Not even one to talk about and criticize.
You can be entertained while disagreeing with absolutely everything the main characters do. You can be gripped by a series of characters you’d hate in real life. You can actually change your mind or open your heart because of a good story that challenges your worldview. You can dislike a story, but still watch it for the communal and shared aspect. Remember how nice it is when, once in a while, the entire world watches the same TV show and talks about it every Monday morning?
The only thing that matters is creating a good and sincere story. Love Actually is that. You can see the love for this project, the skill with which the storylines were set up and executed, the great acting, the incredible Christmas charm that covers the entire movie like snow. The fact that I would never do what its characters do, is irrelevant. The fact that I don’t agree with many decisions, is irrelevant.
The fact that many plots are unrealistic or extraordinary, is the whole friggin’ point! If it wasn’t extraordinary, if it was just some pretty realistic series of non-commital real-life events, why are we telling the story at all?
Those were my thoughts for today,
Tiamo