Romantic Movies

BBC4 is airing a 3 part series (9pm on Saturdays) in Britain at the moment called 'Reader, I Married Him'. Presented by Daisy Goodwin, this takes the famous line from Jane Eyre's closing chapter, used by Michele Roberts as the title of her book, which examines the positive affects of romantic fiction. Daisy claims that research shows that lovey stories enhances the life of the reader. I then turned over and watched a romantic film, 27 Dresses.

Here's my own musings on the subject - but focussing on films rather than books.

I admit my snootiness in believing that romantic comedies (and their fiction counterparts) are for lighthearted - no let's be honest - shallow people. They are entertainment, not an artform. I eschew then and so do quality cinemas. I have watched them only in my younger days before I acquired taste; or under duress, as a compromise with someone who enjoys them.

But what is a quality film then? After reviewing an Ulrich Seidl film recently, I asked myself that if this is what art house cinema offers, then I do not want to be part of it. What is considered real is often bleak. It involves amateur, shaky and unglossed cinematography to show that this is real life, unglossed. It shows cruelty and unhappiness with no hope or resolve. Seidl's Dog Days has two scenes of sexual humiliation, and only one has any form of recovery or hope afterwards. Other reviews comment on the Austrian film's wonderfully true portrayal of middle class life (or as I just mistyped - muddle class). But it is unlike any lives I've heard of. There's the similarly styled In Your Hands, another European (this time Danish) Dogme film. This tale of a female priest in a women's prison and an enigmatic healing inmate began engagingly - but suddenly, everything went wrong for all the characters, including the healer committing suicide - and the film ended abruptly, as if they had 5 minutes to wrap this up as depressingly as possible. Ireland's recent Garage makes kind but lonely Josie with possible learning difficulties such a hopeless life that he also takes it. There's two more suicides in the fantastic Hell/L'Enfer; the possibility of a positive end with a family reunion and the [clearing of father's name] is thwarted by the wicked mother's final words: 'Je ne regrete rien' [I regret nothing].

So if true art is hopelessness, what does it give to the world? Art supporters argue that funding and opportunities be given to make and see art in its various forms because it is an essential part of enriching our lives. Dog Days did not enrich my life at all. If I wasn't the reviewer, I'd have walked out - not out of prudishness but because I found the film to be unpleasant as well as dull. Artists might be prone to a spot of melancholy and some might say (e.g. on the television series, Spaced - see my review on Telewatcher.com) that artists can only work when they are unhappy.

But ask many spiritual writers and they say that in peacefulness and joy, we are our most creative. Bill Harris from the Centrepoint research institute in the US writes and length (and I do mean length) about the creative flow he has after using Holosync CDs of the frequency which we encounter through deep meditation. Indian in America writer Eknath Easwaran stipulates that we should not have extremes of emotion but a steady inner calm (another mistype - syrupy - is apt). Part of me disagrees: the full gamut of emotions from high to low are what makes us fully alive and what artists channel for their work. It must also resonate in their audience for the work to have any credence. A steady line of emotional equilibrium might involve calmness but also meritocracy of experience. But I do want to partly side with these spiritual philosophies, and say that misery can be creative; but so can joy.

Romantic stories come from a kind of joy. It's common to advise someone who seems over hopeful that 'this isn't the movies' and the dreams that come true in the plots of mainstream films will not happen to us. I've even heard it said that such stories are dangerous, because they fuel us with false hope and expectations - even addictions - to a life that we cannot have. As I observed in 'Sally at The Writing Group' (on authspot.com), people can be obsessive in films and books and not get locked up for it. In romantic comedies, such a premise is often central to the story. In 27 dresses, Jane can have been a bridesmaid that many times, have all her dresses still, and live for the weekly wedding column in the city's quality paper. In Lars and the Real Girl, a community accepts a young man's blow up doll as a real girlfriend. But cynics would say that films should not even put it into people's head that a tiny part of this behaviour is socially acceptable or healthy. But perhaps by hyperbole - choosing a scenario which is likely to be weirder than what most viewers experience - a cathartic point is made.

Because romantic comedies, for all their apparent shallowness, do offer a catharsis for their characters and their viewers. Lars plays out his dysfunction through the charade with the doll, deciding that she dies and this allows him to connect with a real girl at church that he likes. In 27 dresses, Jane overcomes the lifelong belief that she has to be Mom to her younger sister and to the whole world, and that she cannot say no to anyone. Like Kate Winslet's character in The Holiday and Bridget Jones, Jane is able to let go of her crush on a colleague (often a boss) and find someone else, quite different. You do get the girl/boy; you do bond with your long lost or difficult family member. You do get the great job - or walk out dramatically of the one you hate. As often the protagonists is a nerd, or someone who for some reason can't get it right, the encouragement is all the greater. You too can live the life you want.

Prevalent popular spiritual theories say that this is actually true. Thoughts produce energies which produce realities. So does the romcom addict live the life they want and break out of their negative patterns because they fill their minds with the ideas of such stories? Perhaps the problem is that we tell ourselves that they are only stories, and for the two hours or less that they are playing out on a screen before us, we can believe that we can follow the heroine to her happy ending; but not when we leave. Unlike the protagonist's exemption, living our lives through films, books are signs of imbalance.

Some might say that the writers are as much about wish fulfilment as the watchers. William Nicholson's script for Shadowlands features the recurring line: 'We read to know were not alone ' - and watch too. But in my writing, I have taken that statement further: 'we write to know we're not alone'. The unkind would say that this latter delusion is the harder and is worse for leading other vulnerable disillusioneds to the same disappointment that I will have: that life doesn't end well. - That you can't make your dreams happen to you. And that focusing on these incredible wishes only make writers and their audiences sadder. Jane Austen never married: she never found her own Darcy. Charlotte Bronte's marriage was more St Rivers than Rochester - do we therefore assume that the pen is instead of the reality? - That if you write it for others to escape to, that you will not experience it yourself? And are these two examples of those who have lead generations of romantic fantasists astray into ideals they can't fulfil? Lost In Austen (see telewacther.com) is a story about just that - a modern girl whose escapism through Pride and Prejudice is so pervasive that she cannot find love without leaving her modern life completely and living with the fictional hero in another time period.

Although they probably wont be classed as literary, will modern the romantic films have a similar charge?

They are charged wrongly. Perhaps romantic comedies have limited insights into the human condition, but they all have at least one good point to make: whether it's Shallow Hal overcoming his fat prejudice, Cinderella overcoming her wicked stepmother [Ever After], Penelope breaking free of her mother and her pig nose curse by accepting her unconventional snout: they tell their audience that shadow over their lives can be removed. Not all romcoms have a positive message - the holiday says to me, it's sad to be alone at the festive season, and this makes this film quite dangerous. People choose a light film to cheer themselves up and forget a problem, not to have it exacerbated. I do believe that movies are meant to give hope and that those who say, 'you take it too seriously: it's only a film' miss the point of what movies are for. They are not for forgetting your life: they are for inspiring.

Personally, I prefer the medium between the negative ending so called art and quality cinema, and these fluffy offerings. There is angst and disappointment in life; sadly the three act formula means that the doldrum life begins to after in the first ten minutes, and it's easy to conclude that your own life is trapped in something of no narrative - and therefore no - value. This is wrong, for life's subtleties are what moves us, and it is a shame that this is rarely shown, even celebrated, in narratives. (A challenge for later!) there is nothing wrong in having characters enter the gates of hell in a story: the fault is leaving them there. I like a story that does just that, and this is what my own creative writing aims for - is to examine the depth of human experience, but to conclude where matters resolve, and dreams are found. As a writer, I make no apology that I aim to do this for me as much as my audience, but if I allow myself to ignore the voices of cynicism, I can enjoy the same success in wish fulfilment as I hope to offer and receive from other stories. I haven't yet mastered (or endorse) the Secret which states that I should have all I want just by thinking about it; but I do believe in at least some of its principle, and for me that is a very spiritual one.

But if given the choice between the so called fluffy, unliterary and silly romcom and the miserable arty experience, I shall be more inclined to chose the former. if art is defined by giving something to its viewer, then the blockbuster formulaic crowd pleasers fit the bill rather than the supposed work of creative geniuses. And romcoms are crowd pleasers because they do please the masses, and often are subtly intelligent (such as Down With Love). Understanding how the formula is adhered to and yet utilised for an individual film is part of understanding the language of cinema, and that in itself is literary. Writers chose the lives of their characters: the Norah Effrons (When Harry Met Sally) give them hope and resolve and freedom; the writers of Garage like films (such as Jude) give ultimate despair. Unless the despair is meant to make a point to stir society into new consciousness and action, the latter is not excusable and it is possible to do make the point and end happily (Moll Flanders).

As writers craft the lives of their fictional world, so can we shape our own - faith not fate.