Day 150: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

Two couples are having troubles in their lives and relationships. Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) leaves his wife of 40 years because he doesn’t want to accept that he’s old now. Their daughter, Sally (Naomi Watts), wants to start a family and open an art gallery but neither is happening and it puts a strain on her marriage.

It never really occurred to me before how difficult it must be to go through a divorce when you’re a pensioner. I always thought that so long as you had people around then you’d be alright, but obviously that’s just not even close to being correct. Just having people around doesn’t make anyone less lonely, the number of people you have in your life doesn’t have any bearing on the loneliness you feel. Intimacy can reduce loneliness (it can also increase it too, I know), and I don’t mean sexual intimacy, although that too. Even just the little things between you and a partner can reassure you that you’re not alone in this isolating place. And so losing the person closest to you would be hard on anyone but I think perhaps losing them when you’re older would be more difficult. When Alfie leaves her, Helena (Gemma Jones) tries to kill herself and seeks comfort in a fortune teller to try and get through. She spends a lot of her time bothering her daughter and drinking large quantities of alcohol but seems more content now that the fortune teller has told her positive things about her future. Alfie isn’t doing too well; he feels young at heart and after having sex with a young prostitute he proposes to her and lavishes a small fortune on her. She’s not interested in the things he is and she soon cheats on him with a man her own age. He realises that the something extra he wanted out of life was just a dream and he tries to reunite with Helena, but she has moved on. It all seemed rather difficult and I’m not convinced either of them were happy with the choices they made.

Sally has a crush on her new boss and she thinks he might like her too. Her husband, Roy (Josh Brolin), is a writer who is struggling to finish his new novel and he seems reluctant to start a family with her. She decides that what she needs to do is open up an art gallery since that has been her lifelong dream, and her mum has agreed to lend her the money necessary to do so. But she discovers that her boss doesn’t actually feel anything for her and is instead having an affair with her friend, and when she goes to her mum to ask about getting more than the initial amount of money, she is told that she can’t have any of the money. Sally and Roy divorce, her boss has stated he has no interest in her, and her dream of opening a gallery seems to be getting further away. It all gets too much and she takes it out on her mother, calling her an idiot for listening to this fortune teller. Despite being supportive of her mother’s apparent improvement due to the meetings with the fortune teller, hearing that she can’t have the money seems to be the last straw and she lets out all the vicious feelings she had been holding back. Everything she wanted in life has been ripped away all quite quickly and so she hits out at the easiest target.

Instead of working within the relationship to improve their lives and help each other, they choose to look for what they want away from their partners. I want to hope most people would try to make it work within their relationship but I don’t think that’s actually what happens. It seems that when people feel some sort of dissatisfaction in their lives, they hold those closest to them responsible. It’s almost like they see them as some sort of anchor that is weighing them down and stopping them from moving forward to new and better things. While I’ll agree that some people can be anchors, I don’t think that’s fair for everyone. People will always bring something to your life and especially those closest to you, who you share things with. To blame them for your dissatisfaction is to pick an easy target and it most likely won’t lead to anything good.

The film was alright but I wasn’t bowled over by it. I didn’t really believe any of the characters and so their relationships with each other just seemed forced. The story was interesting, I do like this kind of thing.

6/10

Day 143: Meet Joe Black

Death wants a break from the loneliness of his work and so goes to Bill Parrish (Anthony Hopkins) to be guided in the ways of the living. He experiences more than he intended when he fell in love with Bill’s daughter Susan (Claire Forlani) and he is reluctant to leave.

The mark of a good life must surely be having no regrets and when Bill is confronted with Death, he doesn’t try to change things in his life, he mostly continues on as before but is more open with his love for the people closest to him. And he doesn’t make a risky business decision because he wants the company to stay as he built it, so the people can remember him through it. I can’t imagine many of us will die with no regrets, I’m sure the majority of us will have something we wish we could’ve done differently. But knowing that, as most people must, doesn’t usually make people change their ways. We will watch a film such as this and think how wonderful it must be to live exactly as you wished to and maybe even entertain a notion or two about changing something in our lives that hasn’t been right. But that won’t last, it might only last so long as a blog post, let’s say. Then we’ll go back to doing things we don’t want to do even though we know we could live so much better.

If we accept that Death (as a sentient entity) does exist, it never really occurred to me how lonely it must be. Its sole purpose is to take people out of their lives and off into some form of afterlife and rarely is it welcomed. It makes sense that Joe (Brad Pitt) would be reluctant to leave because he’s in love and is loved in return, and he’s had many other interesting human experiences along the way. People can sometimes wish for the sense of isolation that Death has but to have never experienced any form of closeness to any other person seems quite heartbreaking. I’m not really sure what I’m getting at here, to be honest. Enjoy your time with people while you have it, and try not to wish it away.

The film itself is very well done, which is what you’d expect since it does last for over 3 hours. Anthony Hopkins was delightful, as usual. His portrayal of a man who has been so strong for all his life but is now faced with such pain and uncertainty is great. Brad Pitt is able to exhibit two very different personalities; one is intense and commanding, while the other is laidback and sweet. The story is very interesting and I’d recommend this film to anyone.

8/10