One Miss, One Hit And A Home Run… The Eternal Search For The Love Of Your Life

By Sumaya Samarasinghe

There are some actors who just never seem to get out of the genre they are categorised in. It is nothing new. Cary Grant was never cast as a serial killer, or Marilyn Monroe as a college professor. However the truly talented ones have this chameleon type of personality which makes them able to act as just about anybody. The present king of mutation is probably Robert de Niro and among the female actresses Meryl Streep and Charlize Theron literally become the characters they are portraying.

The ever likable Hugh Grant and the charming Sarah Jessica Parker are the two leads in Did You Hear About The Morgans? Their latest romantic comedy which has left me wondering if they know how to portray anything else other than what they are doing in this film.

The story is as simple as it is cliché. Paul and Meryl Morgan are respectively a New York lawyer and a very successful real estate agent. They are separated following Paul’s infidelity. The film begins when Paul is desperate to win his wife’s trust again. The couple witnesses a murder and has to enter a witness protection programme which sends them to a very little known town in Wyoming. From that point onwards, you can imagine the rest of the story. The inhabitants of the small town called Ray go about on horses, eat meat, enjoy rodeos and play Bingo, but deep inside they are good American Folks! May as well stop there with the summary, because actually there is nothing much to say.
The end is predictable and it makes me sad to actually write this but Grant and Parker are too old to play these parts! She is not that different to the character she plays in Sex And The City and Hugh Grant’s constant smart comments and a joke a minute dialogue becomes tedious after a while. Believe me, I can still watch Four Weddings And A Funeral and he was pretty good in About A Boy where he played the selfish and completely self absorbed main character. But my advice to these two likable and lovely actors is to either change agents or grow up!

The romance gets better with The Time Traveler’s Wife based on a book of the same title by Audrey Niffenegger. Henry is a librarian in Chicago who falls in love with Clare, an art student. It could have been a simple straight-forward love story except that Henry suffers from Chrono-Displacement Disorder which makes his genetic clock reset and he finds himself traveling into the past as well as the future. When Henry travels through time, he leaves his clothes and belongings behind making him arrive at his new destination completely naked. Henry learns to steal clothes, run from the police and thugs, and it is often a physically bruised and emotionally exhausted Henry who returns to his present life.
The story focuses mainly on how Henry’s time traveling affects his relationship with Clare. He uses his condition sometimes to his advantage and is able to get in advance the winning lottery ticket which will enable the young couple to buy the mansion of their dreams. This time, unlike in the Morgans, the choice of actors is spot on. Eric Bana who was wonderful in Spielberg’s Munich conveys the correct mix of male strength and sensitivity necessary for the role. He is an isolated human being who slowly opens up and feels, as he says in the film safe again after meeting Clare played by Rachel Mc Adam. This Canadian actress already has quite a fan club after she probably made half the world cry in The Notebook. However she has shown how versatile her talent is by acting in a wide range of films like Red Eye, The Family Stone and more recently Sherlock Holmes.

The mistake a viewer may make while watching the film version of the story is to expect more action, maybe even more grandiose special effects.

But it isn’t about that. The Time Traveler’s Wife is a timeless love story which focuses mainly on the relationship of the young couple, their issues, how they overcome them, how they build a family; simple little day to day things, actually made more complicated by Henry’s condition.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is about everlasting love and haven’t we all wished for that someday?

Even the blasé character played by George Clooney in Jason Reitman’s excellent Up In The Air begins to learn to feel for others as the film goes along. Clooney plays the role of Ray Bingham, a corporate downsizing expert who goes to companies and fires the staff for the company heads. Ray loves his job and spends more than 320 days of the year up in the air traveling from state to state. His goal is to collect ten million miles, stay at home the least amount of days possible and avoid all forms of commitment.

At an airport bar, he meets Alex and soon they begin an affair which pretty much depends on their layover times and locations! It all seems rather technical and unemotional at first. It is a true pleasure to watch Clooney transform himself into a great actor. Until this film, he had relied a little too much on two things: good looks and incredible charisma. But with Up In The Air Clooney is flawless  as this cold, attractive but middle aged  man who lives in  isolation of his family and is initially quite satisfied with one night stands and random relationships.

But when he meets Alex, something changes and the pleasure of human contact and its invaluable importance completely shatters Ray’s set beliefs. In addition to this he is forced to play mentor to Natalie played by the incredible Anna Kendrick. She is a baby shark who tells Ray and Alex how she thought she would graduate at a certain age, marry two years later, but that nothing has gone as planned. She is a reminder to the viewer to not let life pass you by and sadly, she reminded me of quite a few over-planners whom I know!

The script is well written and it is only at the end that the audience realise how little one knows about Alex, whereas Ray and Natalie have been quite open about their families and other personal issues. One cannot help but feel a little scared for Ray when he offers Alex the key to his apartment and her lack of enthusiasm is so apparent.

The graceful Vera Farmiga even manages to make lines like: “I am the woman you don’t have to worry about. Just think of me as yourself, only with a vagina.” Technically this would be a male fantasy: meeting a gorgeous woman at a bar in an airport, having off and on flings in lovely impersonal hotels with absolutely no strings attached. But then is it possible to always remain so emotionless? At the risk of stating the obvious, I have noticed that in most relationships, rarely are both parties in synch when it comes to falling in love. They may stay together for various reasons, however if you take any couple and ask them separately when they fell for each other, my bet is that they will not mention the same time, day, year or event!

Clooney’s character, Ray suddenly begins to understand how nice it is to have someone to think of, a person who thinks of you; basically a human being who cares whether you live or die. The actor has never been as good and it is pleasurable to watch Ray gradually enjoy the emotion of love towards Alex and even his estranged family because let’s face it, what’s the point of living if one  does not experience that wonderful feeling at least once in a lifetime?

Up In The Air is probably one of the best films I have seen in the past six months. It will not agree with a majority of the public I feel. With no special effects or action, the film still manages to captivate its audience thanks to top class acting and a story that flows. It is indeed about love, but also about respecting one another and one day meeting your match like Ray does after years of one night stands, not calling back the women he has flings with and cutting himself from the world of humans which is generally filled with commitments and strings of issues.

A film to not miss if you are ready to make a connection.