I Love You Like Crazy, Like Crazy: Film Review
It has been roughly eight months since I hit up the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, getting to see Margin Call and Like Crazy before almost anyone else and absolutely loving the whole experience. But for some reason, while I was able to hit out a Margin Call review in short order―well, short for me anyway―I never got my Like Crazy review polished and posted.
Which might lead you to believe that I loved Margin Call, and was so blah about Like Crazy that I couldn't be bothered to even pen a review, when the exact opposite has turned out to be true. Margin Call was a good film, with some very magnificent and even Oscar worthy performances. But as the months have passed I've found myself to be kind of one-and-done with it. I'm glad I saw it, no regets on that score, but I don't feel any pressing need to revisit that world and those characters again, unless significant edits were made to the film after it premiered at the festival. (Yes, I know, BLASPHEMY that I could never see it again and be fine, but it is what it is. YMMV.)
Conversely, Like Crazy has only grown in my esteem over the passing months. Something about that film, a little sleeper indie hit that could, has stuck with me all this time; like the two main characters' emotions, there is something there that will not let me go. (Trust me, there is a reason it won top prizes at Sundance, and deservedly so.) So I am very excited that this weekend, after months of waiting, I finally get the chance to revisit a film that, like an old love, has haunted me for the better part of a year.
The rest of my review will be breaking down the film into pieces and analyzing those, so there will be MANY SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
The Story
As someone who loves romantic films, yet is utterly tired of the cliched, hamfisted, poorly written dreck that passes for romcoms or romantic indies these day, Like Crazy is a wonderful surprise.
Unlike most modern romcoms, with their overly contrived "meet cutes" and sassy caricatured BFFs and snappy one liners combined with embarrassing pratfalls, Like Crazy aims to tell a much more realistic story about falling in love, and the trials that come as a result of that love. And unlike some of the big indie hits from the last few years that also deal with complicated emotions between two people (Blue Valentine or 500 Days of Summer come immediately to mind), Like Crazy Strikes the perfect tone. It is neither too dark or too twee, too cloistered or too cloying. Instead it's an emotionally balanced portrayal of two characters in love, acting and reacting against one another as they try to make sense of their world, and is wonderfully, satisfyingly spot on.
The story of Like Crazy is that of, technically, a love story between Anna and Jacob, two people born in different countries who meet in college, fall in love for the first time, and want to be together but must instead deal with the drama of long distances, and Visas and legal battles, and the strain of being apart. For those who have, like them, experienced the pain of a relationship conducted long distance I am sure it will strike a definite chord. In spite of the heightened drama of the story created by this premise, the lives and personalities wound up in this story are presented as true to life as the subject matter allows.
One of the beautiful juxtapositions I took away from the film (which I might be reading too much into, but I hope not) was the nature of Anna and Jacob and how they expressed themselves, either through the use of words or objects. For Anna it is via words. She is a gifted writer; we see this in her opening scene, where she is reading aloud for her English class, and Jacob is intrigued. Throughout the film words play an intrinsic part of her story. She is the one who first initiated their relationship, a scribbled note to show her interest left on the windshield of a delighted Jacob's car. Her chosen vocation involves words, doing grunt work for a magazine in London and working her way slowly but steadily up to becoming its editor. Once she and Jacob are together, she keeps a handwritten journal to record their relationship, full of pictures and keepsakes, which later on they try to use as documentation in their attempt to be legally married. And whenever they are on the outs relationship-wise, the texts she sends him or the vulnerable conversations she has with him over the phone, in key moments, prevent him from fully commiting to his new life without her.
If the outlet Anna uses to express herself to Jacob is in words, to connect herself to to his world and give vibrancy to her life, then then for Jacob, his mode of expresson is in things. He like Anna also creates, but he uses intrinsic objects to do this, opening a furniture shop in LA after graduation and building each piece they sell from scratch. He builds a beautiful chair made just for Anna with his bare hands, which she proudly keeps in her apartment in London, and which becomes a physical point of conflict between her and her boyfriend after she and Jacob temporarily separate. Later on he gives her a bracelet, which breaks and falls off in a key scene near the end, also with her boyfriend.
This yin and yang of their natures, extensions of their souls portrayed as tangible parts of their personality, was subtly done, but added a nice dynamic to the nature of their relationship.
:: MAJOR SPOILER ABOUT THE ENDING ::
The wonderful thing about Like Crazy is that, while it is technically a love story at its core, the way that story is presented could also be construed as a not-love story, in the same vein as 500 Days of Summer and Blue Valentine. It is about two lovers who continue pursuing each other long after they probably should. Long after the rhyme or reason of being together has faded, and only their mission to be together, and the simple fact of being each other's first love, sustains them. Of two people who because of their attraction and longing for each other―and the might-have-beens and what ifs of their relationships that were never realized, bad decisions and missed chances―never are able to completely break it off with each other, even when the best thing for both of them might be to cut their losses and walk away. Their love for each other, for better or worse, sustains them through the rough times and keeps them coming back.
For this reason I absolutely loved the ending, even though I am sure many people will find themselves having serious issues with it, and even though my interpretation of what Drake is trying to say might differ wildy from someone else's. In the last scene of the film, we see Anna and Jacob showering together (one of the first published stills from the film, actually, the two of them wet and surrounded by blue), their goal accomplished, their mission won: they are married, they are together. But outwardly there is little triumph or love in their expressons or body language; the only thing clearly visible is the weariness of the emotional wounds that their battle to be together has left them with. Can they overcome that, can their love survive the almost phyrric victory it took to get them married at last, desite all odds? Will the next scene we see of them be one where they are together, content and happy at last, or will it show them once more separated, perhaps this time for good? We never know; the film ends before a coda to their relationship can be shown. For some viewers this will no doubt be frustrating, but to be honest I loved the open endedness, lady-or-the-tiger-ishness of it all. Again, it feels very real and raw. Their love story has no set, rote ending; the final scene is completely up to them to fill in, on their own, and for the audience to always speculate about.
I might be reading way too much into it―in fact, I probably am―but in that end scene, one of the key scenes of the whole film, Anna and Jacob are verbally silent and physcially naked; stripped of both the words and objects they usually use to navigate the world. In the end all they have is each other, and hopefully, if they are lucky, that will be enough. I am positive that the ending as it is, leaving the audience with unresolved yet delicious questions, is in fact one of the reasons I love the film so much, and why it has stayed with me all this time.
:: END OF MAJOR SPOILER ABOUT THE ENDING ::
The Script
For those people unfamiliar with Drake Doremus' previous works (like I was before I saw the film and did some research), his style of directing is a sort of organic collaboration between actor and script. There is no set screenplay; instead he sets vague points where he wants the scene to go, but lets the actors get their characters to that point with great fluidity, with whatever dialogue or movement they wish to use. They are allowed to ad-lib their lines at will, letting the scenes unfold and snowball in the way they feel would be appropriate for their character. Thus the script is a perfect manifestation of the sense of unfaked, realistic storytelling the film is attempting to portay.
Because of this, each scene is imbued with awkward pauses in conversation, or quiet moments that stretch on, or stilted, halting dialogue; the sort of things that a lot of modern mainstream films try to edit out or smooth away. With our modern culture and its glut of “reality” programming, life semi scripted, we are rarely see this onscreen, even in moments of supposed reality. Instead of being frustrated by it, I instead found myself relishing the chance to experience scenes or situations unfold in a much more languid manner than I was accustomed to; I found the rhythm of natural sounding conversations soothing, not stilting. Our blink-and-you-miss-it culture relies on things to be fast and snappy and spontaneous; to have our senses assaulted at every moment and everything overly explained. This film is the antithesis of that, for better or worse. I think a lot about how the film is received will be due to whether or not the audience can handle Drake's form of naturalistic storytelling, but I for one, found it to be a refreshing change.
A side effect of this improvisational screenplay is that it makes the dramatic scenes in the film that much more intense, the emotions of the characters heightened. Whether full of joy, or fighting, or crying, or trying to use conversation or objects to make sense of their shifting worlds, the realness of the characters in those scenes―the actors imbuing the moment with the sort of stark rhythm of conversation that can't be faked―made the agony or esctasy of those moments come to life, much more so than if they had been scripted to death.
The story moves forward in fits and starts in time. Each new scene, like waking from a dream, requires a moment of adjustment, as your brain procceses the images on the screen, waiting to see whose life the viewer gets to examine now, Anna's or Jacob's, and what stage of their relationship, on again or off again, they are currently in. From one scene to the next, they are together, then they are not, and we find they have not been for months, only to be smashed back together once more. Because these jumps are kept very linear and each scene quickly establishes everything we need to know, the jumps forward are accomplished with minimal jarring to the audience's sense of time, even if our emotions or those of the characters are not spared the same consideration.
The Cinematography
The camera lens also matches the feeling of realness the director is attempting to portray. The lighting is natural. At times the film uses a documentary style shaky cam, peering in on the characters; at times the scenes are instead polished and still. No matter how they are presented, every angle is consciously chosen to give the viewer a fly-on-the-wall glimpse into private moments or conversations in Anna or Jacob's lives, the sort of moments no outsider is ever meant to hear. This sometimes made watching certain scenes extremely uncomfortable; like at any moment I, the viewer, would be caught in the act of spying on them in their rawest points, and get chased away. But the story and characters were engaging enough to keep me entranced, unwilling to turn away even when I felt like I should, for decency's sake.
There are several montages placed thoughout the movie, sandwiched between the bigger scenes, that give the audience a sense of the action taking place between those shots, and also help convey a passing of time, albeit in a more artistic way. (You see quick shots of some of them in the trailer.) They contain no dialogue, just a beautiful piano soundtrack that I depserately want for myself, and show us several scenes of Anna and Jacob that needed to be compressed for the sake of time yet are no less essential to telling their story. The scenes include: candid moments from their initial courtship; the time spent together while Anna violated her Visa and stayed with Jacob, represented in a series of chronological shots looking down on them in bed; the escalator in the airport where Anna waits, time sped up, for Jacob to come and visit her overseas since she cannot go see him. Each one is beautifully shot and thoughtfully composed, a complete film in their own right. They are mini films-within a film, the sort of short form video projects that I could see a film student proudly making. But tied together in this film, they enhance everything else going on and add an artistic dimension to the film that visually borders on the poetic. You see mere snippets of these montages in the trailer, but trust me, seeing them full length has an even greater emotional impact. Those simple montages are some of the images from the film that have stayed with me the longest and remained the most vivid, all these months later.
(To go along with the piano comment: the major images and scenes of the film are, for the most part, starkly free of a running soundtrack of pop hits or swelling orchestras that serve as a backdrop to what we are seeing and hearing. Except for the montages, Drake lets the scenes speak for themselves, with no attempts to guide the audience via music to what he thinks they should be feeling, thus heightening the realism of each scene. It was jarring at first but, like with the organic script, I quickly adjusted and even found myself enjoying it.)
The Actors
As stated before in the story section, Drake Doremus gives his actors a rough outline of where a scene needs to go and then lets them improv the rest, relying on their instincts and insights into their characters to fill in the blanks and paint in the dialogue of the story. Giving your actors that much freedom and trusting them to make it all work somehow is something I could see going horribly irrevocably wrong; it requires a tight cast of brilliant actors to pull it off, otherwise the director is sunk. Luckily Drake could not have chosen better in selecting his cast.
The two leads for this film, Anna and Jacob, require finding skilled actors who can, from the first moment we see their characters onscreen, make them likeable, relatable, and have the sort of believable chemistry to keep their unconventional relationship together despite all odds. I cannot say enough good things about the two leads that were picked. Felicity Jones, as Anna, and Anton Yelchin, as Jacob, did a stunning job. They really come into their own in this film, their performances both together and apart compelling, lively, and sympathetic.
I sincerely hope this film is a breakout one for Anton. I am sure people might point to Star Trek as accomplishing that for him, but in reality his part in that film is extremely small and gave him only a few scenes to develop his character. In Like Crazy he has to help carry the whole film and does himself credit, showing a depth of feeling and range and soft spoken romantic appeal that I had hoped, but had not known for sure, that he possessed. He really shined. If this becomes known as the film for which he becomes a household name as a leading man, he certainly could not have asked for a better film to help him accomplish that feat.
Felicity was just darling. She imbued Anna with equal parts spirit and naivete; enough spirit to be willing to break the legal rules of her Visa to stay with Jacob; enough naivete to not realize how much that fateful decision will cost her in the years to come. And yet even when she made major mistakes I was rooting for her character to suceed. As frustrating as her decisions might seem, you completely understand her appeal and why Jacob has difficulty letting her go.
If Felicity and Anton were superb as the leads, then Jennifer Lawrence, in the tiny but essential role as Anton's new girlfriend in LA, named Sam, is a revelation. If Anna is meant to be the protagonist in this story, surely Sam, on the surface, must by default be the antagonist, correct? In a conventional romance, maybe. Yet there is in this story, as in real life, so much more to it than that, and Jennifer uses all of her skills as an actress to make sure this comes across.
Because of the established likability of Anna, and the investment I had made as a viewer in her and Jacob making their relationship work, by the time Sam comes into the picture, in all of her sunny California blondneness and sweet disposition, I instantly chalked her up as a threat to Anna, someone I should possibly be disinclined to like. But instead, when Jacob is unable to make up his mind whether to be with Sam, wholly present in his new life, or to return to Anna, it was Sam I ended up having the most sympathy for. Sam ended up not the antagonist at all; if anything Anna and Jocob are the main protagonists and antagonists of their own story, and the people like Sam that they encounter along the way are the collateral damage for their emotional rollercoasters. It was heartbreaking to watch Sam realize that, through no fault of her own, some other woman will always hold the larger half of Jacob's heart, a man she truly does love and wants to be with, even when I think she is well aware of how doomed she and Jacob are as a couple, in the shadow of Anna.
I had first heard good buzz about Jennifer from her part in Winter's Bone, which everyone semed to rave about. And if that did not do the trick of making her one of the current young “it” actresses, then her part in this summer's X-Men movie, compounded with the leading role in the highly anticipated Hunger Games, certainly will. But I suspect a part of me will always be proud that it was in this small film, in a potentially tiny one-note part that she imbued with vibrancy and sympathy, that I first got to see a hint of how deep the well of her talent truly is. It cemented in my mind that she is not only a bona fide film star but a skilled actress, and one I look forward to seeing onscreen for many years to come.
The actors playing Anna's parents were the other standouts in the cast. They have such limited screen time, but they did a wonderful job projecting warmth, familiarity, and practicality as they interact with Anna and Jacob and warn them in advance of the folly of letting Anna overstay her Visa. Alex Kingston I recognized from ER or Doctor Who, and it was nice to see her onscreen again, playing a role quite different from the others I had seen.
There are other characters in the movie of course, but with the advent of time I don't really remember them. The guy playing Anna's boyfriend did a decent, if standard, job. Handsome and doting but boring, and I never really found anything about his character that stuck out at me. (Maybe that is the point?) Let's just say that it if it wasn't a conscious acting choice to be that nondescript, he was no Jennifer Lawrence and leave it at that.
Summary
I love films about love, the sort of happy ending type of picture in which the characters walk into the sunset hand in hand. But even more satisfying than that are, for me, the films dealing with the conflicts involved with love, the realistic, everyday trials and dissappintments that fill the day to day and that don't provide an easy resolution when the credits begin to roll.
Like Crazy accomplishes the latter in an honest, heartfelt way, a beautiful tribute to relationships and first loves and the craftsmanship of filmmaking in one glorious little package. I honestly long to go back and experience this film once more, to see the characters fall in love all over again and see the trials they go through as a result of that love, and am so thrilled that I will get the chance this weekend. Like Anna and Jacob's relatonship, it has been a long, difficult wait for the film to be officially released, but one that will be so infinitely worth it.
I hope that maybe someone out there reading this who had not heard of or was not planning to go see this film, might change their mind and give it a chance. (Let's just say that I am usually a one-and-done person with films, and with the hit-or miss nature of modern cinema, you are lucky if I even see it in the theater at all. But this film? I paid $15 to see it back in January. I'm going to shell out more cash to see it this weekend, and maybe drag a friend to a matinee of it later on. And then when it hits the cheap theaters for its final leg, I am so there too, my $3 in hand and a smile on my face. Hopefuly that convinces you that this film is worthwhile, if nothing else.)
And for those that are planning on seeing it, chime in once you do and let me know what you thought! The only problem with seeing a film at a fancy film fest, months before everyone else gets the chance, is that it is impossible to talk about it with other people. Which for me, since I am one of those that love to dissect movies or plays out loud after I see them, is absolute torture. I've had this wonderful experience sitting on my chest all these months, and no one to talk about it with. Well, the wait is finally over! Please share with me in the joy, the pain, things you liked or disliked about the film, and what you think of Drake's directing choices or the actors' acting choices. Nothing would make me happier!
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