This movie was very interesting.
It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either.
It was choppy and seemed to be fast paced, but the lack of music and movement made it slow, which is very appropriate if you ask me.
here's the story in case you've never heard of this movie:
Anna and Jacob are two college students in LA and they get together.
Anna is from the UK and overstays her Visa, so she gets banned from the US.
They start to drift apart, but several times they come back together again.
The couple gets married in hopes to lift the ban, but no luck.
Eventually the ban does get lifted, but by this time Anna and Jacob have
fallen apart again.
Anna tells Jacob the ban is lifted and he tells her to come back to America
to live with him. Unfortunately, when Anna goes to America, they both realize that
they simply don't like each other anymore and Anna goes home.
so the fact that the movie is slow is appropriate to me because, us as the viewers are supposed to be waiting and waiting to see them get back together, just like the characters in the movie.
my theory as to why it ultimately didn't work out between them is because they didn't actually like each other as much as they thought they did. when they first get together, the mood is about infatuation and being in the moment. they didn't have time to get out of that phase before they were seaparated, so that is all they thought their relationship was.
they were also not committed to each other. every time they got back together, they would ask each other if they had been seeing anyone else and even asking if they'd slept with someone else! (?) they clearly didn't care about the relationship enough to refrain from being unfaithful to one another.
the director did a very good job of easing the audience into believing that they didn't like each other anymore. when they were together again, a little bit of that infatuation from the beginning is chiseled off and in the end, the mood is opposite of the beginning, awkward and wrong.
to me, i never felt that they were actually in love. that what you're supposed to believe right at the beginning, but i also wonder if maybe it was meant to seem like they weren't in real love, or if the chemistry between the actors didn't really click. the feeling could have been to forshadow the future events.
when i first saw the trailer for this movie, i bought that they were in love and that the movie would have more on why they were in love and show how they grew to love each other. when i saw the movie i found that their relationship was all about the physical aspect of it, and they didn't really get to know each other as people. it was interesting to see the different atmospheres between the trailer and the actual movie.
my mother was starting to go Like Crazy because they would keep getting back together despite them losing interst in one another. here's what i think explains why they kept getting back together despite them losing interest in each other: at the very end of the movie before Anna left, it showed them hugging and having flashbacks to their good memories, and i think that those memories are all they hold onto in the relationship. i then think back to when they would be contemplating whether they should get back together and i imagine them playing those good memories in their mind and wanting those feelings again. so at the end when they look over all the time they've spent together, they almost decide that they just can't get those feelings back anymore and she leaves.
ultimately, it's just a sad "love" story, but there is a lot to learn from it. you can learn that not moving on can be really dangerous and harmful not only to you, but to those around you. you can learn that being faithful in a relationship is a lot more important than what society tells us. and lastly, you can learn that a successful relationship is more than what the good feelings make it.
