Among the traits of my target audience I am looking for is people who enjoy watching films that are rich with meaning, and then discussing what they found meaningful there.
A film I saw recently called “The Notebook” was one such meaning-filled movie.
The movie is about love. Country boy meets city girl. Her parents disapprove. They go back and forth between separating and getting together again. But beyond their story and beyond the angst is a story of the will to meaning.
At one point the young man shakes his girlfriend and says, “What do you want? Not what do I want, what do your parents want, not what does your fiancé want. What do you want?!”
She is confused. Her passion helps her find her way, not the momentary passion of impulsiveness but the passion of knowing who she is and what kind of life she wants to lead.
The movie goes back and forth between two scenes: where they are young and where they have aged. As an older couple, she has dementia and he visits her daily in the home where she is cared for and he reads her a story.
It is actually their story, and he tells it over so that it will stimulate her memory of it.
The doctor gives him a cold stare, saying he does not approve of the partner’s storytelling, explaining that he’s only trying to protect him, because “dementia is a deteriorating condition” and his attempts to get through to her will only end in “disappointment.”
At one point his wife does “come back” They are both moved and they embrace joyously. At another time she slips away again and suddenly does not recognize him. She starts shouting for help because a strange man is in her room. He is overcome with intense, palpable grief. Among the medical staff that rushes to calm her is the doctor who had told the husband not to read her stories. The doctor gives him the same cold stare as he had before.
If her partner had followed the doctor’s recommendation and not read to her, would that have resolved anything for him? Would it have extinguished the fire in his heart? Would that kind of “acceptance” have stopped the aching in his heart for a loving response from her? No! My thought was the saying, “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Yet, this saying does not quite capture my feelings. Grief is part of life. Passion is part of life. You cannot have one without the other.
If you want to be alive, you have to be honest with your feelings and honest with yourself. You have to be real.