If you’ve never seen this movie, you must watch it. Nicholas Cage and Tea Leoni find such an honest take on life it floored me the first time I saw the movie. I watched it again tonight (nothing on TV and I own the DVD now) and if good movies make you feel something, then this is a good movie.
For some reason, this night, I thought about DubDub (she looks like Tea Leoni) and our relationship. I realized as I watched this movie that these two characters are good for each other. In the final analysis, I was good for DubDub but she wasn’t good for me. I had a previously relationship in which that particular young lady was good for me but I wasn’t good for her. That’s the way it has to work… it’s compromise, it’s doing what’s good for both of you, not what’s easiest.
There are probably married couples out there reading this saying to themselves that I’m naïve. Maybe so. It’s easy for me to sit on the sidelines and critique what’s going on around me but I’ve been in relationships that were overwhelming to my partner because my belief is to give everything to the relationship and when I can’t give any more – then I keep on giving.
I guess it’s what I grew up with; it’s what I saw in my parents. DubDub admitted to me that she saw her parents fight almost constantly but she knew they loved each other because she could hear the headboard banging against the wall at night. That’s not love… that’s passion. Turn that passion the wrong way and it becomes hate. I guess whatever it was for them, it worked.
There are more than a billion ways to live because there are a billion people living. It’s like a big puzzle that’s constantly moving. No one knows what the picture looks like; they just know it’s usually dark at midnight. People know that all they have to do is get up and make it through another day. Happy, sad, homeless, rich, poor, lonely, childless, honest or not – you have to make it through the day. You have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and learn to swing at what’s pitched at you.
Obviously, some days are better than others and if the bad days sting a LOT, then you have to wonder about the good days. You have to think about what made the great days so great. You have to forget the pain of what’s happening and think about that sunny day you spent on the beach with the warm sun hitting your face. You have to remember all the choices you made to get to the point where you’re mad at yourself. Wondering if you can take back any of the options you once had. There are other options, but you don’t want to think about those. You start thinking about decisions you made 13 years ago, like in The Family Man. Get on that plane, or choose love.
The movie touches me because you get to see two sides of the Jack Campbell character: one is a rich city-dweller who has all the fine things in life, at the price of a loving relationship. The other is a Jack Campbell who is a suburbanite-father who has a loving relationship but at the cost of the finer things in life. In my life, I fall somewhere in between. I’m that weird anomaly of suburbia – the single man. I don’t think my neighbors understand me. They don’t really know me. They’d probably describe me much like the neighbors of a serial killer you see on the news “He was quiet, kept to himself, not many visitors…”
I watched the version of the DVD in which the director talks over the dialog. This was good because I was already somewhat melancholy and this movie makes me cry a little on my best days just because of its honesty. Nothing seems out of place and all the lines (except for a few – suspension of disbelief) seem somehow organic. [I stole ‘organic’ from the director because he kept describing several of his shots that way]
And then there’s the future, lead by what happened in the past. I think, in a lot of ways, what has already happened to me has affected my future in ways I haven’t even thought about yet. I just have this feeling there’s something out there that’s going to either help me or hinder me later in life. I don’t know what it is but I’m very cautiously waiting for it to happen. I’m not flipping to the last chapter to see what happens in case I die (a la ‘When Harry Met Sally…’) but something’s out there hovering around like a boomerang, waiting to return.
And maybe I’ll bring it on myself, and maybe I’ll be surprised when it happens and when it happens – I’ll let you know.
For some reason, this night, I thought about DubDub (she looks like Tea Leoni) and our relationship. I realized as I watched this movie that these two characters are good for each other. In the final analysis, I was good for DubDub but she wasn’t good for me. I had a previously relationship in which that particular young lady was good for me but I wasn’t good for her. That’s the way it has to work… it’s compromise, it’s doing what’s good for both of you, not what’s easiest.
There are probably married couples out there reading this saying to themselves that I’m naïve. Maybe so. It’s easy for me to sit on the sidelines and critique what’s going on around me but I’ve been in relationships that were overwhelming to my partner because my belief is to give everything to the relationship and when I can’t give any more – then I keep on giving.
I guess it’s what I grew up with; it’s what I saw in my parents. DubDub admitted to me that she saw her parents fight almost constantly but she knew they loved each other because she could hear the headboard banging against the wall at night. That’s not love… that’s passion. Turn that passion the wrong way and it becomes hate. I guess whatever it was for them, it worked.
There are more than a billion ways to live because there are a billion people living. It’s like a big puzzle that’s constantly moving. No one knows what the picture looks like; they just know it’s usually dark at midnight. People know that all they have to do is get up and make it through another day. Happy, sad, homeless, rich, poor, lonely, childless, honest or not – you have to make it through the day. You have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and learn to swing at what’s pitched at you.
Obviously, some days are better than others and if the bad days sting a LOT, then you have to wonder about the good days. You have to think about what made the great days so great. You have to forget the pain of what’s happening and think about that sunny day you spent on the beach with the warm sun hitting your face. You have to remember all the choices you made to get to the point where you’re mad at yourself. Wondering if you can take back any of the options you once had. There are other options, but you don’t want to think about those. You start thinking about decisions you made 13 years ago, like in The Family Man. Get on that plane, or choose love.
The movie touches me because you get to see two sides of the Jack Campbell character: one is a rich city-dweller who has all the fine things in life, at the price of a loving relationship. The other is a Jack Campbell who is a suburbanite-father who has a loving relationship but at the cost of the finer things in life. In my life, I fall somewhere in between. I’m that weird anomaly of suburbia – the single man. I don’t think my neighbors understand me. They don’t really know me. They’d probably describe me much like the neighbors of a serial killer you see on the news “He was quiet, kept to himself, not many visitors…”
I watched the version of the DVD in which the director talks over the dialog. This was good because I was already somewhat melancholy and this movie makes me cry a little on my best days just because of its honesty. Nothing seems out of place and all the lines (except for a few – suspension of disbelief) seem somehow organic. [I stole ‘organic’ from the director because he kept describing several of his shots that way]
And then there’s the future, lead by what happened in the past. I think, in a lot of ways, what has already happened to me has affected my future in ways I haven’t even thought about yet. I just have this feeling there’s something out there that’s going to either help me or hinder me later in life. I don’t know what it is but I’m very cautiously waiting for it to happen. I’m not flipping to the last chapter to see what happens in case I die (a la ‘When Harry Met Sally…’) but something’s out there hovering around like a boomerang, waiting to return.
And maybe I’ll bring it on myself, and maybe I’ll be surprised when it happens and when it happens – I’ll let you know.