Wanting, needing, loving, missing...

Like Crazy

Director Drake Doremus Screenwriters Drake Doremus, Ben York Jones Cast Felicity Jones, Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Lawrence

“I thought I understood it, that I could grasp it, but I didn’t, not really. Only the smudgeness of it; the pink-slippered, allcontainered, semi-precious eagerness of it. I didn’t realize it would sometimes be more than whole, that the wholeness was a rather luxurious idea. Because it’s the halves that halve you in half. I didn’t know, don’t know, about the in-between bits; the gory bits of you, and the gory bits of me."

Before actually writing this one, I’d like to clear out any of the false assumptions. One: This is not a chick flick. Two: Just because it’s won the top prize at the Sundance Film Festival, it doesn’t mean you will like it; you might, in fact, hate it.

Now that is out of the way, Like Crazy goes beyond dialogue, beyond the writing, beyond any ordinary story, or as you may have guessed, beyond a love story. It isn’t brilliantly poetic nor is it even mildly cheesy. To be honest, this movie has one of the blandest storylines I have ever seen. This is perhaps why it didn’t score big with a lot of people.

Long story short: Girl meets Boy. They fall in love. Girl is separated from Boy.

If you are looking for a load of mindless romance, this is not your cup of tea. There is romance though, a good load of it, and then there is pain. What would stun you is that the love and pain keep on interchanging so often that it would transport you to somewhere in the middle, where you might be able to figure out this film’s artistic side, or you might switch off and pass this movie off as a mess. Since we already know that the Sundance Film Festival’s judge’s panel is what we would like to classify as ‘the hippies amongst critics’, it doesn’t come as a surprise that this fi lm captured all the attention.

The performances are outstanding. Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones have to carry the burden of the entire movie on their shoulders and I believe they do a smash-up job. The silences, the looks, the gentle touches, the expressions all melt together perfectly. Of course you won’t notice it. I didn’t. I was confused for about an hour after seeing the film and my brain was fuzzy. What would strike anyone is the reality of the movie. It is too believable. The situations, the relationships, the characters portrayed are too real. I can’t point out the exact reason behind it: it could either be the writing, the camera work, or something else. But it works.

This isn’t like your regular review because I, the reviewer, haven’t given you my opinion. I liked it. I was able to appreciate how the whole package turned out. But that still isn’t my opinion. I won’t give you one. You might like it or you might not, as I said before. It is up for you to decide.