Movie: Truly Madly Deeply (Anthony Minghella, 1990)
"My feet will want to march to where you are sleeping, but I shall go on living." This line from a Pablo Neruda poem, quoted late in Truly Madly Deeply encapsulates it better than anything I could write about it. The film never pretends that Jamie's (Alan Rickman) ghost is a real feat of magic, or that Nina (Juliet Stevenson) believes it is. She quickly clocks that he is a figment of her imagination and though she decides to indulge her runaway brain, she also accepts it rationally as just another challenging part of her grieving process. The scenes between Rickman and Stevenson are wonderful and express how much of a void his death left in her life, but it's no coincidence that the best and most romantic scene is a date with a new potential partner.
In the late 80's/early 90's a group of British actors and directors (seemingly all of them somehow, someway connected to Emma Thompson) emerged that influenced much of the British cinema I grew up with. They brought to their characters and movies a cheerful wit, grounded in reality that seemed to be an extension of their actual personalities. They carried themselves with a confidence that they could be at comfort in any context with any people, and that they welcomed this opportunity to interact with the world around them and be part of shaping it. And though their attitudes and roles were far removed from the cinema of council homes and mine workers, you still always got the sense that they didn't forget their working class roots and sensibilities; that even though they were sometimes walking in the same circles as the Tony Blairs and Princess Diana's, they could see through the bullshit, call it out, and keep at least one foot in the realm of the ordinary people. In other words, they were cool as shit people that folks like me (as my gushing peace on Da 5 Bloods showed, I have more sympathy for socialism than the average fan of American-led liberal globalisation, and more sympathy for American-led liberal globalisation than the average socialist) could see as a wonderful examples of how to be in the world.
If you want to see many of these actors in one place you can watch Sense & Sensibility, Peter's Friends or Love, Actually, but to my surprise no film embodies their spirit as wonderfully as Truly Madly Deeply (and the same can be said for Juliet Stevenson's performance in it). I absolutely loved it, pretty much from the first seconds, filmed to make London at night feel like a place where even at your most heartbroken you can strike a beautiful, poetic figure, In voiceover we hear Nina calmly explain to her psychiatrist that she is hearing Jamie talk to her, sometimes even in Spanish, a language he didn't speak when alive. These scenes immediately set the mood for what's to come. Everything that happens in the film is informed by the idea that the world is an interesting and fun place and that it's interesting and fun to be able to engage it with curiosity, intelligence and confidence. Nina is able to do so, and Truly Madly Deeply is above all about observing her be. It never presents her as just a generic grieving woman, but forces you to consider her as a full person with many interests, opportunities and happy moments in her life.
Nina does break down once, sobbing and yelping uncontrollably. Minghella films it all in a close-up he holds for a long time, leaving almost no distance between Stevenson and the audience. It's a scene of raw despair that quickly makes way for more lighthearted touch, without ever dismissing or forgetting Nina's vulnearbility. It's a great example of how confident the film is juggling different tones and moods. It shifts between magic realism and psychological drama, and between romantic fantasy and slapstick comedy. Once Jamie's ghost has settled down he brings along some of his friends from the underworld. They keep Nina from sleeping with their disagreements about whether to watch Five Easy Pieces or Hannah and Her Sisters. Most of these 'friends' look like regular people, but Minghella also has a few folks stand around looking like tbey are extras in a Dracula film.. It's a very funny detail in context that's also a testament to the film's commitment to find something worthwhile about every single character it introduces, including the rodent control friend who comes to inspect Nina's house for rats. He does his job seemingly oblivious to Nina yelling for Jamie to appear, until before leaving he kindly explains he is gonna tell his dead wife about his day, as he has been doing for the past 12 years. His words symbolise the optimistc solidarity that anchors the film. It's a beautiful fantasy, your lover returning from the death as a ghost you can touch and talk to, but Truly Madly Deeply imagines something even better: the ability to continue in the face of an ugly reality.
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