Directed by Drake Doremus
Starring -- Felicity Jones, Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Lawrence, Alex Kingston
Paramount
Five stars | A+
Like Crazy is the story of Jacob (Anton Yelchin), an American boy in love with the art of creation, and Anna (Felicity Jones), an English girl studying in the States, who falls in love with the art of love; the single art that Anna knows she does not understand fully, but only the "smudge" of it.
Jacob and Anna meet in class, and Anna pursues the relationship first. The two date for a year, and the film perfectly portrays the freshness and the life in their first year together; their walks on the beach, their strolls down the street, but this is all a result of Anna's choice to violate her Visa and stay a summer with Jacob. After returning to her home country, Anna is sent back to the UK by the TSA as a result of the aforementioned issue, and she and Jacob enter a phase of "starting and stopping," something Anna says that they can't do, but it turns out...that's all they really do. In the meanwhile, Jacob dates a woman named Sam (Jennifer Lawrence), who, at first, remains blissfully oblivious to the lingering sense of desperation that Jacob has regarding his feelings for both Sam and Anna, who is back in London. Sam's character narrowly beats Anna's as the most heart-wrenching of all; you know, just by the sense of Lawrence's expressions, that she deeply loves Jacob, and you also know that he can't seem to ever let go of Anna's ghostly presence in his life. She acknowledges this fact, especially one night when Anna calls to deliver Jacob the news that they should marry. Jacob obliges, and he treks to the UK to wed Anna. But something stands in the way of a full registration of the couple's marriage license; Anna's violation of her Visa. The two of them separate once more, and Jacob returns to Sam, whilst Anna dates a friend called Simon (Charlie Bewley). In an attempt to take their relationship farther, Simon proposes to Anna one night at dinner with her parents (wonderfully portrayed by the ever-amazing Alex Kingston and Oliver Muerhead), but Anna declines and the relationship fails, as does Jacob's and Sam's, which ends with a shot of Sam packing her things and leaving Jacob's home, a look of pain on her face, one not unlike the tear-inducing scene earlier wherein she cries into Jacob's shoulder. Anna and Jacob move back in together, and the awkwardness lingers for a while, ending the film with the two in the shower--shots of their memories bringing the motion picture to a close.
I cannot place my emotions for this film into a completely coherent sentence--at least, I don't think I can. Immediately during my viewing of this film, I knew it would reserve a spot in my heart. At the beginning of the film, I thought, "God, I want that relationship," but by the end of the film, I thought, "Man, I do NOT want that relationship." The tragic realism of these characters and their situation is striking to the heart, and I just hate that I love how horrible I feel for them; the fact that they can't get over each other and that they result to leaving one another and then coming back. It truly is awful.
The acting in this film, though, is three levels above splendidly superb. It's no surprise that my three favorite performances were by the three main females, now is it? Alex Kingston, Jennifer Lawrence, and Felicity Jones play three totally different characters, but they all really fuse into emotionally dense characters whose lives are really flipped upside-down. I've already mentioned Lawrence's character, but it truly is beautiful the way Jennifer Lawrence can portray a character. I mean she's got Katniss--the brave heroine, Elissa in House at the End of the Street--the horrified victim, Mystique--the sexy Switzerland, Ree--the pursuant daughter, and now Sam--the heartbroken woman. Something always seems to be unique about each one of her characters, but this one was just a raw human being, which I adored. I commend Jennifer Lawrence for that. Alex Kingston was the character that the story would have crumbled without--at least, in my opinion. She was the supportive, hilarious, and cautious woman who Alex Kingston really was tremendous as. As for Felicity Jones, there isn't much to say. Her character, and her performance, speaks for herself. The rest of the cast--Yelchin, Muerhead, and Bewley--were all wondrous in their own respects.
Everything else was just the icing on the cake--the subtly brilliant cinematography, the score, the soundtrack, and the usage of sets and locations as their own characters. London was truly the center of emotional disaster, and Los Angeles was its rebuild.
This film should go down in history as one of the most tragically beautiful romances in film's existence. Truly lovely.
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