Go and see Ruby Sparks. I nearly walked out after fifteen minutes, because it seemed like the most saccharine and cliché-ridden romantic comedy. But then she appears – the writer’s dream becomes his reality – and you realise that under the guise of a good-natured rom-com there lies a dark and disturbing psycho-drama and a clever philosophical meditation on love, power, freedom and identity. It’s one of the most thought-provoking films I’ve seen this year.
Minor plot-spoilers follow, but not much more than is in the trailer. He is a writer; he starts writing about a woman who has appeared in his dreams, and he creates the perfect woman who will fill his lonely heart. Then she appears, for real, and after the slapstick scenes of him and his brother coming to terms with that, he has to get on with the business of really knowing and loving her.
And of course the person he has created stops fitting into his model. So he breaks his self-imposed rule, and starts re-writing who she is, even as he is in the middle of the relationship. It goes funny, and pear-shaped, and self-defeating, and then very, very dark, before the inevitable (and I thought quite beautiful) light-filled resolution.
Like any good fairy-tale or parable, it presents in an outlandish form something that is so normal we have stopped seeing it. In this case, that we are attracted to people (not just romantically) because they match what we find attractive, what we hope to find in another; and that – often – we subtly and not-so-subtly pressure and manipulate people to conform to our expectations of what the relationship should be about.
So there is a joy in discovering ‘the other’, but the other is objectified and can become a projection of our own hopes. Then we realise that they are more than the person we want them to be – they are the person they want to be, and a person we may never appreciate or even understand.
Is the first kind of attraction inherently narcissistic and manipulative? Is all love, at least at the beginning, a form of fantasy? How do we keep the delight in finding someone who fits with our dreams at the same time as giving them the space to surprise and unsettle and disturb? We objectify someone, but we can’t live with an object for very long.
And if, to take the questioning much further, the person begins to realise that they have in some sense been created by another, where does that leave them? How do we set them free, without losing everything? How do they set themselves free? This isn’t such a fantasy: think of the myriad ways in which we have all been ‘created’, formed, by others – by parents, teachers, friends, culture, society…
I’m being very heavy, because I came away with my head spinning. It’s not as heavy as I have made it out – in fact it feels like a bit of fluff. That’s what makes it so clever, it’s a breezy romcom that reads, afterwards, like a lecture in philosophy or psychology. It’s intriguing and great fun.
I wonder if the writer of the film was influenced by the film ‘Gambit’ starring Michael Caine and Shirley Mclaine? A very entertining film on a similar theme.
People do seem to be attracted to a particular type of person (often one not too dissimilar to their opposite sex parent). I look nothing like my husband’s ex-wife but our personalities are uncannily similar! There are people who don’t like their partners or friends to be themselves and develop, but there also people who will mould themselves to be whatever their partner wants them to be (a bit like Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride), they want to be created.
I’ll look out for the movie. I suspect it’s going to make uncomfortable viewing!
Authentic Love is not rational. Love is irrational. We do not Love what is perfect to us. Love still Loves when giant flaws are revealed and everything is imperfect.
Shakespeare says ‘Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind’ If I were to look for my conscious ideal of perfection I would look for someone rational, kind, loving, protective in stature, gentle, generous of time and Love, warm, comfortable to be around, comfortable in their own skin, happy, expressive, calm etc etc.
Authentic Love is divinely bestowed. It is unexplainable irrational, undeniable and ridiculous but undoable.
undoable meaning once done can not be undone
People meet in many different ways, sometimes almost unintentionally. This was certainly my case. We found we just got on really well. I think the thirty years we’ve been together bear testimony to that.
Isn’t this Pygmalion
Pygmalion – George Bernard Shaw was one our Great Socialists teachers, despite the fact that he refused to assign himself to any religion, (he couldn’t bring himself to worship a religion who hailed somebody being crucified). If we had looked to his teachings on social justice, and the care which he advocated to the environment, and the equality of the treatment of women across the planet, then the redistribution of the earths wealth and her resources would have already made great changes to many lives upon this Earth. What a great teacher he made, who in his own way reached the secular thousands with his message – not so far different from Catholic Social teaching.