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Movie Review: 'Love Actually'
by Steven Clark
21 December 2003
"Love Actually" is written and directed by Richard Curtis, whose previous
scripts, "Four Weddings and a Funeral," "Notting Hill," and "Bridget Jones's Diary"
may be best said to document the social life of Tony Blair's Cool Britannia.
"Love Actually" weaves eight different love stories into a Christmas tapestry
that is described as a romantic comedy, but was one of the saddest movies
I've seen of late. The movie opens in an airport with people hugging and
kissing those they love while the narrator wistfully remarks that the people
who died on September eleven's last thoughts were about their loved ones.
Very high-toned, but a sterile example of injecting seriousness into a
fluffy, on-the-surface comedy, yet its opening and closing scenes in an
airport show a world in transit, with no stable values or mores to hold on
to.
Hugh Grant plays a British Prime Minister whose major concern is that he
has no social life. This could be remedied by Martine McCutcheon, a cute
political aide who can't help saying four-letter words at inappropriate
times...assuming that in contemporary Britain, there is an inappropriate
time and place for gutter language. This film does not make that assumption.
Grant finally gets the strength to ask McCutcheon for her telephone number
during a visit by the President of the U.S., played by Billy Bob Thornton. A
strange choice, but perhaps by this time the Libertarians have won the White
House. So, Grant walks in to find the Prez making out with McCutcheon. Those
bloody yanks: oversexed, overpaid, and over here. This spurs Grant to agree
with his staff (especially a smirking negress) that Britain must 'take a
stand' against America, the only political thing Grant does in this film.
He gives Billy Bob a gentle tongue-lashing at a press conference, while
still fuming at the tonguing Billy Bob gave his aide.
There is a Clintonesque quality to Grant's PM. He chases McCutcheon from house to house on Christmas Eve with only one security guard in tow; a good thing the lads in the IRA didn't find out. Grant plays his
role in that uh...uh...ah...ah style of cuteness that wows the Cosmo girls
and soccer moms, but leaves me cold. When Grant assures McCutcheon he could
have his chaps in the SAS deal with her abusive boyfriend, it is delivered
in such an offhanded way that he looks less the dashing PM than a clerk at
the water cooler.
The other stories feature degrees of tongue-in-cheeking. Colin Firth
is a writer who catches his wife cheating on him. He flees abroad and falls
in love with his Portugese housekeeper. Neither speaks the other's language,
and the scenes where they try to communicate are worth a twitter, although
it is a bit of a stretch that after a week or so, Firth would propose to
her. This big scene, where he flies from London to France on Christmas Eve
and searches her out leading a phalanx of her relatives and fellow
countrymen seems a case of enforced cutesy. Capra would have made it more
lively.
Liam Neeson is a husband whose wife just died, and he worries about his
ten-year-old son's depression. His emotions are strained at his wife's
funeral, an awful event where all are obliged to watch a video presentation
of her life with obnoxious rock music blaring everywhere. Since Di's
funeral, it seems Brits can't get enough of bad taste for mourning. We find
out that the lad's depression isn't due to mum's death; it is because he has
the hots for a girl in his class who is moving back to America. It's nice to
know grief therapy isn't needed here, just a solid actor like Neeson become
gooey and touchy-feely as he tells lad how to score with the babe before she
jets off.
Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman are a married couple with an adultery
problem. Rickman has the hots (subtle, ironic hots) for Heike Makatsch, his
office assistant. This leads to the funniest scene in the film, where
Rickman tries to buy a necklace for Makatsch while his wife is barely out of
sight, and is waited on by Rowan Atkinson, of "Blackadder" and "Mr. Bean" fame.
Atkinson insists on overwrapping and overindulging the customer until
Rickman is almost screaming. It really plays well, but this film doesn't go
in for broad comedy, and Curtis isn't at home doing farce; he wants irony.
Bill Nighly plays Billy Mack, a has-been rock musician who dresses as badly
as he sings, He re-records an old hit as a Christmas release, and
continually tells interviewer after interviewer how awful the song is, and
how stupid people are for listening to it...and the song climbs to the
charts faster then a sleigh on speed. The song is awful, and Mack thoroughly
obnoxious. Is his bit a comment on the vapidness of contemporary British
culture, or simply to be taken as is? I suspect the latter, as bad rock and
soul music is splattered throughout this film, and assume it's Curtis'
personal preference.
However much "Love Actually" goes on about its stated subject, there is a
second not-so-subliminal theme, and that is miscegenation. The film is full
of blacks and whites coupling with each other. We see a wedding between
blonde Keira Knightly and black Chiwetel Ejiofor. His best man, Andrew
Lincoln, is white, and secretly loves Knightly even as he flawlessly stage
manages the wedding, from the videotaping to having soul and gospel
musicians pop out of the pews, and they ain't playing Mendelssohn.
But Lincoln won't let go, and on Christmas Eve he appears at Knightly's
doorstep with a tape player warbling out Silent Night ('who is it?', demands
Ejiofor. 'Christmas carolers,' says Knightly.'Tell the little buggers to
piss off,' shouts Ejiodor, which sums up what multicultural Britain thinks
of the real, true Britain). While the carol plays, Lincoln uses a stack of
cue cards to tell Knightly of his affection for her. Cutesy, again...and
Knightly returns his love with a deep kiss, yet at film's end she stays with
Ejiofor although we see little affection between them. Why? Probably Curtis
feels more affection for race-mixing then marriage and love. Once black, no
turning back, eh?
Kris Marshall is a happy-go-lucky yobbo who can't score with the birds,
so he confides to his black friend (in this Britain, apparently every white
man's best friend is black) that he'll go to America, where his British
accent wil knock over the girls. It's satiric and fun, yet when he returns
with a Budweiser ad girl on his arm, she brings along a blonde friend who
flies into the black man's arms without so much as a proper introduction. At
the Christmas pageant for Liam Neeson's son, we get to see the boy's
heartthrob, and guess what? She's a mulatto. At this point in the film, I
wasn't surprised, nor was I when the pageant has no Christmas music but
instead features the mulatto in a ululating, soul, get-down number.
Multiculturalism, especially of the black variety (or monotony), is
thrown in our faces. A recurring image is an art exhibit where a large,
blown-up photo of four black men naked from the rear is prominiently
displayed. Rickman's office is a kind of Oxfam relief agency, and on an
entire wall is a photo of an emaciated African peasant with the words SHARE
THEIR BURDEN above him. The lack of any white music or culture reminds me of
an article written by Derek Turner, editor of Right Now!, a British
conservative publication where he lamented a British arts festival where no
Purcell, Elgar, or Britten was played, only rap, rock, and anything third
world. Here is the sadness I spoke of. I hardly expect every Briton to have
Shakespeare on his lips, but this cultural degeneration makes me wonder how
much longer the precious stone set in the silver sea has to go before the
muslims simply make St. Paul's into a mosque and hack up John Barleycorn
once and for all...and the crown jewels are pawned off to Brussels.
As Blair and his crowd devolve Britain, so does "Love Actually" bear
witness to this cultural suicide. In the movie, no Briton mates with each
other if he can help it...find a black or foreigner, and since this is a
recurring theme in several stories, I can't say it is a coincidence. Even
Laura Liney, who plays an office assistant under Rickman, connects with a
dark Meditteranean man...only to have her mentally disturbed brother drag
her from her lover's bed to the asylum where he both attacks and needs her.
There are two lovers who seem to contradict this. Joanna Page and Martin
Freeman are film stand-ins for porno stars, and while a black director keeps
urging them to 'hold her breasts,' or 'now enter her in back,' they engage
in sweet conversation and pleasant smiles, actually connecting with each
other at film's end. Their innocence reminds me of most of the white
world...unaware how they're humiliating themselves for the dubiousness of
fame or breaking into film, and ignorant of the societal manipulation
they've undergone. I'm sure when it comes to children, they'll go the
abortion route and adopt some third-world infant and so keep in tune with
the rest of the crowd.
Certainly Curtis thinks he's being clever, but only if he's trying to
show a decadent class unable to keep their past and ethnic greatness. Curtis
certainly could have explored some comedic possibilities of Blair's Britain,
like the female pub owner who advertised for a 'single white male' in front
of her pub and was almost arrested for racism, or the church that got into
hot water for tacking up their Christmas concert outside the doors and was
accused of offending muslims. Or need I add the system of police spies ready
to pounce on the first scent of racism in the constabulary? But I don't
think Curtis and his chaps are up to it; it's definitely Kafka territory.
So I would find it hard to recommend "Love Actually" as worth watching. If
you see it, view it as a document of a deracinated social class; one that
reminds me less of the present then those Britons in the dark ages who were
simply swallowed up in the barbarian invasions upon British soil...was love
on their minds, or extinction?
STEVEN CLARK
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