Memories light the corners of my mind
Misty watercolour memories
of the way we were — ‘The way we were’ by Barbra Streisand
Nothing tugs at our heartstrings like witnessing two lovers, estranged by time and circumstance, finding their way back together. Over the years, cinema has held a special place for those who meet, fall in love, then separate and fall in love all over again because what is love without its classic test of endurance. Some lovers reunite at the end of it all. Some do not and are left heartbroken. And some realise that preserving the memory of love is better than returning to it. Well, as cinema tells us, true love almost always comes at a premium.
To hell and back
In cinema, estrangement fascinatingly occurs in myriad ways. It could be an act of fate as in Michael Curtiz’s ‘Casablanca’ (1942), where a war-torn world prohibits two people from being together. It could also occur by way of society intervening and contriving against lovers, as in Jacques Demy’s romance-drama ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ (1964). Or it could simply stem from interpersonal glitches, as in Michel Gondry’s ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ (2004).
In Gondry’s poetic, modern take on love (written by Charlie Kauffman), Clementine (Kate Winslet) and Joel (Jim Carrey) choose to sever their relationship by literally erasing each other’s memories. Yet, they meet again, and under such a bizarre scenario that it feels staggeringly serendipitous. What’s interesting is how things fare after this: the two have only recently confessed that they despise one another but turns out they have got those bitter memories erased now. So, maybe they could give each other another chance, maybe pledge respective sanities once more just to be together.
Similarly, Richard Linklater’s muses — Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) — reunite in ‘Before Sunset’ (1995) after a gap of nine years but the passion they once shared has apparently never left their beings. Jesse at this point is married to a different woman and has a kid, and Celine seems to have moved on herself. The former is meant to soon catch a plane back home and resume life, as it were, but the prospect of not being with the woman who struck at his core many moons ago stops him in his tracks. Jesse ceremoniously then decides to surrender his seemingly comfortable present in exchange for a precarious future with Celine, proving that love, at its rawest, is as wild as it is beautiful.
In Puttanna Kanagal’s ‘Naagarahaavu’ (1974), a disillusioned young man learns of his former lover being pushed into prostitution by her cruel husband. Not many moments later, when society forbids him the second time from finding love, he pushes himself, and his new lover, quite literally over the edge to find a place where they could no longer be separated.
In Nick Cassavetes’ cult film ‘The Notebook’ (2004), a flailing old man reads his wife (who suffers from Alzheimer’s) a journal to recount their epic story. From their chance meeting several decades ago, their falling in love, their being separated because of social differences and them reuniting against all odds. He reads to her almost every single day, just so she doesn’t forget the essence of their love. Such sentimentalities and nuances have very little to no space in real life but cinema accommodates them wholeheartedly, emphasising its power to fill the romantic voids residing in us.
A bittersweet triumph
If sentimentalism has its share of patrons, many films over the years have also shown that better wisdom, in the form of bittersweet resolutions, can also prevail in storytelling. In Sydney Pollack’s ‘The Way We Were’ (1974), Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford’s characters Katie and Hubbell forge an unlikely companionship and give it their best shot, until they no longer can. The two decide to part ways on friendly terms and even though the urge to not give up on one another pokes them one final time, they choose to turn different ways not only because it is wise to do so, but also out of respect for what they once had.
In C Prem Kumar’s ‘’96’ (2018), two high-school sweethearts meet one another for the first time after nearly two decades and are forced to settle matters of the past over a poignant car ride. Similarly, a woman’s two children learn of her passionate love affair with a man after her death in Clint Eastwood’s ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ (1995). In both cases, no matter how unfair or startling the past seems, the parting note is that true love comes in all forms and shapes and never has any definite shelf life. Who knows, the high-school sweethearts, if not lovers, could go on to be friends and the kids who discovered their mother’s affair at an awkward time could learn that any relationship, forged with honesty and sincerity, is beyond judgement.
Even ‘Casablanca’, a seminal exercise in film noir that broods as much as it bleeds, finds it fitting to see the protagonist walk away with a lighter heart. Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine seems more at peace seeing the love of his life, Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) to safety after realising that his sacrifice has better consequences than his sense of possession. And if Blaine could do it, we all can do a bit more to spot that silver lining, can’t we?