Last night I watched The Deep Blue Sea. It wasn’t particularly good, and except from a stunning Rachel Weisz and the beautiful soundtrack, the movie didn’t say much to me. Rachel plays a woman living in the 50s, married to an older guy- or should I just say old- who adores her. But she is unhappy and has an affair with a younger, more passionate guy. This is the classical Hollywood recipe of what great love is made of. And this is in fact what everything, from literature to movies teaches us. That the more complicated, twisted and impossible love is, the more it’s worth having. When Rachel leaves her cold, boring husband to go live with the man she loves, she is not prepared to face the inevitable: after a while, her man will start having more important things to do than make crazy love to her. And so she decides to kill herself. Not because of him, of course, but because of her incapacity to be happy. Or so she claims in her suicidal letter.
There is, however, an extraordinary moment in the movie. Rachel’s neighbour, and old lady who finds her after the failed attempt to commit suicide, is taking care of her dying husband. And she says to Rachel: “Do you think you know what love is? What you have is not love because love means wiping someone’s ass, changing the sheets when they’ve wet the bed for both of you to be able to keep your dignity and go on living.” Even though there is no such thing as the definition of love, we all try at some point in our lives to define it. And I can’t say for sure I know what love is, but I am certain is not what Rachel thinks. This is perhaps because she does what we all do: run. She runs from a man who loves her and after another who doesn’t love her just as much. So she becomes her husband. This movie made me think of how we get bored with what we have and keep chasing what is not making itself available to us. And thus the idea of love is just ego. Our needy nature , always in the pursuit of attention, validation and reassurance only to throw it in the garbage once we have it.
Lust, passion, sex, the thrill of something or someone new, excitement and attachement are not love. And the whole idea of romance is most of the time a fairytale. We meet people, we fall in love, we live stories- some good, some bad and some extraordinary.But maybe love is just the ability to be kind, to know forgiveness or to live your life exactly how you want to live it. Or maybe love truly is what remains in the absence of everything else.