I watched a horrible, hOrRiBle, HORRIBLE! movie last weekend. It was on HBO and when I read the description I thought it would either be good or stupid. I was pulled in to the characters right away. But early on, there was a scene that made me think I didn't want to watch. Why didn't I turn it off? I don't know.
It seemed to me that the writer probably had the attitude "I'm going to show what REAL relationships are like," thus taking quite a negative approach. There were several couples, each of them exemplifying different issues or problems we probably all face in a romantical relationship. But one couple, the main couple, seems like they will redeem our hope and the movie. The guy is 30ish, the narrator, has a great job, the perfect girlfriend and they just found out they are going to have a baby. He says everything has gone the way it was planned (the baby is a surprise, but not like a teenage pregnancy. They've been together for 3 years and are very committed). He has everything the way he wanted it and the way it should be. I really had hopes for this couple. Even the early scene that should have told me to turn it off was used to show that this guy was more mature and grounded and committed than his friends.
Then this guy goes to a friend's wedding. He meets a girl. She is quite forward, but they just talk and he expresses, without giving details, that he is concerned or scared about life. We know it's because they are having a baby and that wasn't part of the plan, but all else up to now really makes it seem like he's okay with it. Basically, he tells the new girl that there's no more surprises for him. It's not that he's scared, as the rest of the movie seems to play off of, it's not even that he's bored. It's more like a fear of boredom even though he admits to himself is silly because everything is the way he wants it.
We see that the new girl is interested in the guy, but he doesn't seem interested. It was like just nice to talk to someone. When his girlfriend comes back on the scene (she too was at the wedding but off with friends helping with a baby or something) he is happy to see her and everything is fine.
Until...
New girl tells guy that she usually meets her friends after class at a certain time of day at a certain place on campus if he ever wants to stop by. Stupid guy finds himself later in the week, just curious so he goes and runs into girl who invites him to a party the next day. And he goes! Now, since this is going to be a conversation on chastity, let me just point out, this is where he makes his choice. Not later, not in the moment, right here. And he does go to the party and they dance and he touches her and you just want to smash his face in! Then he takes her home and they kiss and I nearly threw up! But then he stops and tells her it's not going to happen. TOO LATE! I scream. Since it's a movie, you can almost tell yourself that at least he stopped, he didn't cross the line, whatever, but in reality, he did and I hate that I'm watching it because it makes these questions or compromises come up in my mind. Anyway...
Guy goes home and the girlfriend, in the meantime, has found out that he's out with a girl and she's rightfully freaking out. They have a big fight, he insists nothing happened but then to be honest admits they kissed. She kicks him out and I was praying the movie would end. Good job girl. It's not "just" a kiss or something like some movies would present it. Movie's over, he ruined it, but she can heal and go on... oh crap, she's pregnant. What is she going to do? I have to keep watching and someone has to make it all better...
So, stupid guy, feeling horrible that he may have just messed up the perfect life he had, doesn't leave and try to figure out how to fix this. He leaves and goes back to new girl. I think she calls him during all this fighting and says something stupid like "if I promise not to touch you will you come back. I really need to talk to you." She's like psycho considering they just met. And of course, they end up sleeping together. He hesitates like he's going to change his mind, but no.
He wakes up the next day and realizes his life is over and I just hoped he felt tremendous amounts of pain and agony over that, but somehow, making a movie out of it, convinces me that he still somehow had the pleasure of giving in and no amount of pain can make it right. The movie goes on and by now I'm nearly having a panic attack watching it and still unable to turn it off because it has to turn into a bad dream or something doesn't it!?!?!?!?!
He ends up camped out on their front porch for a couple nights and finally the girlfriend lets him back in. No reconciliation but a glimpse that maybe they'll work it out because, after all, he didn't mean it. The whole moral of the story seemed to be "these things happen and life sucks so you have to figure out how to get past them."
It was so upsetting. He didn't cheat because he fell in love with someone else. Or because they were having problems and drifted apart. Not that those are good reasons, but at least they give you hope of... prevention? I don't know.
Well, now I've upset myself remembering the whole stupid thing. My point was, I was thinking about this and I remembered a Sunday school lesson or something where someone said that he knew his wife would be faithful because she already had been by waiting until marriage to have sex. I get that now. Part of the importance of waiting for marriage is to prove our faithfulness. If people treated sex as something big and important and didn't treat it so lightly and as something just meant to please "me," things like this wouldn't happen. How can people be so casual about it? I really don't get that. Maybe if this guy, the character in the movie (I'm just assuming) hadn't treated it like it was just a weekend recreational activitiy all through college, it would have been a lot harder to get all... naked and stuff when some girl came onto him. If he'd already made the commitment to be faithful to his wife, even before he met her, it would have been so much harder to cheat and easier to not even think about it.
Which brings up the next point. He really did make the decision when he went to campus to see her. That maybe could have been a mistake. He gets in his car and berates himself for having gone. But then he goes to the party. Even if nothing happened there, we all know, including him, that he is opening the door. And that's what they always tell us about chastity isn't it? You have to make the decision long before the moment? I guess in that regard, the movie was good at driving those lessons home. But...
I guess just another one of my rants about how wicked and horrible the world is. I like to think that these things offend me so much because I'm doing something right. I'm sensitive to important things. Or something. Maybe that's why I always try to express them. I should have just turned the movie off.
2 comments:
wow...you should have read a good book. Now I feel like going to a movie to find some kind of resolution. You are right about everything. You should use this as a Sunday School lesson. You are absolutely right about all of it.
Did this movie have Zach Braff in it? It sounds sort of familiar. I did turn off a movie with Zach Braff b/c it was so stupid and bothersome. It may have been this one.
Anyway, as you know, I am far from being a prude. But I still get really annoyed at the way sex is treated in entertainment. I can't believe how many jokes revolve around sex. To me it's offensive in part because it's so old! How brainless and juvenile do we have to be to find countless, near-identical sex jokes funny?
Of course, you're not talking about a sex comedy, but a sex drama, I suppose. Those also annoy me. I am equally bothered by movies that portray infidelity as a normal part of adulthood. Sometimes you get the idea that the filmmakers think they are being so mature and intellectual because they are, like you said, showing how things "really are," and in real life, people are weak and sleep around. (Many Woody Allen films come to mind, but he's certainly not the only one.) Lame. Irksome, to say the least.
Sometimes I get truly frightened that the vast majority of adults out there are really "playing" grown up, simply doing what they think grown ups are supposed to do and considering themselves mature because of it. It'd be one thing if this only happened in the movies, but the way I've heard some people talk, it applies to real people as well. (Think of the college students who talk about drinking until they pass out, not with juvenile bravado, but with an air of "Oh, it was just one of those things that happens, like bouncing a check or getting a flat tire." It's like they talk about it with a nonchalant attitude, but you know there's a sense in which they're really trying to brag and prove they're adult because they're doing adult things. I don't know. Maybe I'm not saying it well, but you know what I mean. It's all very pseudo.)
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