This is not a great movie season to be single. I adore the movies and even go alone sometimes, always hoping for a love story involving humans my age. But this year it was risky for those of us wandering this earth mate-less.
I couldn't sleep after seeing A Single Man. And it wasn't Colin Firth's character that upset me. After all, his hypothetical last day on the planet contained adulation for his work, three offers for sex and many more for friendship. But Julianne Moore's "Charlie" was harrowing for me. Spending the day in perpetual eyeliner application instead of applying herself, well, it's plausible. The assumption was that the best part of Charlie's life was behind her, a "normal" life having eluded her. Defining "normal" is obviously absurd. And obviously it got to me.
Speaking of eyeliner, George Clooney's character in Up in the Air beyond distressed me. Never mind the economy, the important issue here is that I've always been told that a relationship will eventually fall into place when the stubbornly single person is ready. Well, that didn't happen. For either of us.
It was his traveling solo that disturbed me the most. Travel can be equally dreamy and devastating. I love to look out the window at the Grand Canyon as I constantly traverse the country, but the person I call with my flight number -- just in case -- is my mother. Ryan Bingham didn't seem to care. I do. There's a profound loneliness to sitting on that flotation device disguised as a seat, detached from the world below, my possible last meal Starbucks cashews. I occasionally still have a glimmer of hope that I will meet someone fantastic on a plane, but now that I'm in Coach all the time, I don't keep my eyes quite so open. This is incredibly sexist but I actually feel sorry for men traveling Coach, even if they choose to. I woke up on a cross-country flight Friday night as my seatmate in 25J spilled red wine all over himself trying to maneuver his legs, laptop and self-medication simultaneously.
I saw Up in the Air with a good friend whose boyfriend had just left him for a woman. His take was that Ryan Bingham only became unhappy when he broke his own rules. Reality or rationale, you decide.
Even the true love story of Young Victoria resulted in loneliness. An Education, well, no surprise ending there. It's Complicated? I would have taken him back. Valentine's Day, no one seemed to be in the same room at the same time, which may have more to do with actors' schedules than anything else.
Thank God for Avatar, the movie I was prepared to hate. A love story that made me believe again. Defiant, unlikely, Romeo and Juliet, Tony and Maria. But of course Jake Sully is paraplegic as a human, only in his Avatar life and Avatar body (thinner, stronger, bluer) can he self-actualize. It's his alter ego who finds true love. Ryan Bingham tried to morph too, thinking love would blossom in his butterfly act. Lucky for Sully, he made his fantasy his reality, leaving his crippled human self fully behind.
So if the message is to become ten feet tall with a super skinny waist and long hair that allows me to bond with flying monsters, to live on another planet and commune with nature, and to ignore everyone's advice and do my own thing, I'm up for it. I still believe in love. Especially in the movies.