The Finish Line Is Not The Finish Line

A few nights ago, I sat through what can be called a modern-day cult film. Wasn't my first time, won't be my last. It's an easy distraction I occasionally turn to on slow days. It always ends up triggering me the wrong way though. Sure, it's got big names, good art, groovy music. But, the premise.

Two schoolmates (strangers, for all intents and purposes) are reunited for a fortnight. They spend some time together, deeply connect, and even fall in love. Well, at least one of them does. And then, as it always is, they part ways. Radio silence for about a decade. They meet again, for five days, and what do you know? They spend some time together, deeply connect, and fall in love. And this time around, they go on to gamble with the dreams they'd been dreaming their entire lives, all to be with the person they presume to be their chosen one.

Now, I usually accept nonsensical storylines in the name of fiction. I'm eager to, because they portray a world better than ours. Happier than ours. But, and this is a wildly unpopular opinion, this particular narrative is upsetting. And not only because of sour grapes, notwithstanding that being a significant pain point.

Here, in a passionate hysteria fueled by love, an admirer, offers to shuffle things around, if not their entire life, for their beloved, without qualms. Hopes and aspirations of two individuals converge into the desires of a single entity. See, the makers of the movie were very astute. They rolled the credits at the merry union, leaving the future and their fate to their viewers' discretion. I'm not gifted with psychological or filmmaking insights, but the way I imagine it, each day the characters don't realize the follies of their juvenescence, acrimony would chip away at the bedrock of their relationship. Until they get buried under the very thing they thought would liberate them.

Cinema can be so frustrating. The primary objective is to always obtain the happy ending. Whatever happened to sustaining it? Literature and music and theatre. If only, just once, they'd show the morning after everybody has ridden off into the sunset. Maybe we'd finally do ourselves a favor and fantasize about lives that could someday actually materialize.