A Far Leap from the Modern Romance - Leap Year Movie Review: Part 2

In addition to its assumption and its redefinition of what to look for in a partner, Leap Year also cuts at the modern romance by establishing a new model for the path to love. It’s really quite simple and profound: Anna and Declan find love, not through lust, but by turning aside from it. They first fight like cats and dogs, but eventually come to a sort of mutual dislike that allows them to work together. Then they kiss and find themselves lusting for each other. So far, the normal rom-com path to true love. But Leap Year, by redefining the meaning of a modern romance, dramatically departs from what we all expect to come next.

In a critical scene, after Anna and Declan are forced to kiss at the dinner-table, they end up in the same bed, and all experienced movie-goers are anticipating the worst. Though they begin the night turned away from each other they both slowly turn, and end up face to face. Then, with a swiftness that makes this scene seem less important than it actually is, they turn away and keep their distance. Compare this to a similar scene in P.S. I Love You, where a handsome Irishman ends up staying at Holly’s house (for those who haven’t seen this film, please don’t waste the two hours it would take. You still get the idea). Instead of submitting to a purely animal instinct, Anna and Declan thrust lust aside and make the decision to view each other not as animals, a means to sexual satisfaction, but as human beings who must be cared for and thought of beyond the merely physical. In the split second that it takes for them to turn away, Leap Year redefines what a love story should be. When lust comes they turn aside and the story shouts, “That’s not the way to love someone.”

And it is the morning after they have overcome this important hurdle that they can truly begin to care for each other. Declan finds himself falling for Anna. After choosing to view her as human being, he can accurately evaluate everything she’s said before and he begins to see what a beautiful soul she really has. He sees that she wants a traditional family like he does, even though she’s never said it in so many words. He sees that she believes the same things about a father and husband that he does. And because he has put aside the animal instinct he finds himself able to truly love her as a whole, not mere physically. Anna, on the other hand, first comes to see Declan as her friend. She finds herself, after making a decision to view him as a human to be cared for, learning to trust him, quite a feat as she has never come across a man that she could trust. She begins to care when he’s in pain, to want to help him. At the wedding, when Declan walks away in pain, she follows him to try and help, something she never would have done the day before.

It is at this same wedding where, after Anna has knocked out the bride and ruined her dress, we encounter the film’s other stereotypical scene. The depressed Anna is sitting on the shore of a lake, drinking from a more than half empty alcohol bottle. The sober Declan walks up and tipsy Anna proceeds to explain what’s wrong with him. “You’re in pain” she declares, “You’re like a lion.....a lovely, lovely lion” During this cliche speech she’s moving in close while the moonlight on the water illuminates their profiles. It’s set up to be a repeat of Anne Hathaway’s scene in Paris in The Devil Wears Prada where she ends up in bed next to sober man who was walking her home. And yet Leap Year once again jolts the cliche. Anna throws up on Declan’s shoe and Declan, remarking how extremely unromantic it all is, carries her to a park bench where they spend the night. Once again, the ideal of turning aside from lust has come into play, and it is after this final declaration of returning to a traditional romance that Anna finally discovers that she loves Declan. When she wakes up the next morning, Anna realizes that Declan has taken care of her and that she can trust him. She feels as if he is the man she’s been trying to find all this while, after which she finds herself madly in love with him. Thus, Leap Year makes a decisive cut at the lust to love model seen in films such as PS I Love You and other such typical rom coms. Only by turning aside from the modern model do the characters in Leap Year come to love each other.

A Far Leap from the Modern Romance - Leap Year Movie Review: Part 1

Potential movie-goers may be deterred by the less-than encouraging reviews and reports of Leap Year, a 2010 film starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode. According to most assessments, it’s unfunny, simplistic, and cliche. A facile reading might lead one to conclude that it is yet another remake of the same romantic plot that has been circulating around Hollywood for years. But really, Leap Year is one plucky little film. Instead of bowing to Hollywood’s ideal rom com, the story of Leap Year attempts to redefine the love story on screen. It takes the modern models and turns them upside down, and demands something more substantial, which looks suspiciously traditional, for a love story. What at first appears to be an Amy Adams-chick flick for teen-age dates turns out to be a revolution in cinematic romances. The creators of Leap Year start by renouncing current cinematic mores, and then proceed to rework the path to love in a one hour and forty minute film. In essence, it describes a move from modern to traditional ways. Talk about gutsy.

Leap Year begins its subtle crusade with its background assumption, something we all tend to forget. Most modern romances run on the assumption that marriage is gratuitous and unnatural. Its not the normal way of things. When a woman wants to get married, she’s insecure and dissatisfied with their relationship as it is. In Leap Year, by contrast, marriage is seen as the normal way of things; when people truly love each other, they want to get married. Not once in the film is Anna’s desire to get married questioned but instead we are expected to stand on her side as she expects her boyfriend to propose. We all know that she wants him to marry her because she knows that that’s the way a true love story works, she knows that he really loves her if he wants to marry her. It’s also never suggested, in fact it is denied outright, that Anna wants her boyfriend to propose so he’s “stuck with her”. From the very beginning, we can tell Jeremy doesn’t love Anna because he hasn’t proposed. Consciously or unconsciously, we end up on Declan’s side because, in this film, love is expressed through marriage. Leap Year doesn’t set out to prove that marriage is right and normal, it begins with that as an accepted point. Anna’s search, the heart of the tale, is not for marriage, but for a good marriage; the fact that it’s marriage she seeks is never the question.

The film’s next move in its redefinition of the romance lies in its denial of the “opposites attract” ideal that rampages in Hollywood. Leap Year claims that successful marriages happen between those who share the same values and view of the world. We see this in Anna’s journey to find, not who she wants, but who wants the same things out of life that she does. From the very beginning, it’s obvious that one of the most important criteria for Anna is that her boyfriend share her principles. She tells Jeremy at their dinner, “I’m just glad we want the same things.” She wants a man who will share her life, who believes what she believes about family and marriage. She believes that Jeremy is that guy; that he’s, if not on the same page, at least in the same book. And most of her frustrations come from her slow discovery that Jeremy, in the end, doesn’t share her beliefs. In the apartment scene towards the end of the movie, she discovers that Jeremy doesn’t share her views on marriage, a key element to a good married life, or anything else. She believes it’s essential and the normal way of things; Jeremy’s attitude is, “Why the h--l not? I mean, we’d have gotten around to it eventually.". Anna, as we see in her time at the Bed and Breakfast, wants a home; Jeremy wants a showroom in the form of a Davenport apartment. Anna wants a man who will care for her, and yet Jeremy never once even offers to come and get her on her struggle towards Dublin and when Jeremy’s 60 seconds come along, she sees that he cares not for her, but for himself and the components that make up his successful life. Anna truly does care about family; she still feels that it’s her duty to make time for her father, even though she’s hurt by his irresponsibility when she was a child. But we can tell that Jeremy doesn’t care enough about Anna to feel her pain; instead, he resents her father taking Anna’s attention off of him and has absolutely no sense of duty to family, as she does. By the end of the movie, Anna has realized that Jeremy isn’t like her at all, he’s her exact opposite. Jeremy isn’t the kind of man she wants because his values are completely opposed to hers. And instead of being drawn towards her opposite, she turns away from it, knowing that a marriage of opposites equals disaster.

On the other hand, in Ireland Anna meets Declan, a man who at first appears to be Anna’s exact opposite. He’s rough, not as decorous as Jeremy, and he appears to be everything Anna has shunned her whole life. But as Anna gets to know Declan and discovers the kind of man he is, she finds that he shares her values. She learns that he was once engaged, and then his fiance ran away with his best friend. He was in love, and therefore proposed to his girlfriend. He believes, as she does, that love equals marriage. He wants to “make plans” with his future spouse, in contrast to the modern idea of living in spontaneity. He wants to spend the rest of his life with someone he can share plans with, someone who is like-minded. Declan, like Anna, also wants a home and family. He not only wants to be married and sees marriage as the natural result of being in love, but also believes that in order to be a true man he must care for those he loves, as must any other man. When Anna tells him how her father failed to take care of her when she was young, to explain why she is always controlling things, Declan truly feels for her. “I’m sorry,” he says, “A father is someone you should be able to rely on.” She looks at him in shock, not so much because he is “being nice”, but because he shares her values. Anna believes that a father and husband should care for his family, that they should be his first concern; Declan heartily agrees with her. He later informs her that, if he had 60 seconds to grab his most important possession, it would be his mother’s Claddagh ring, which he gave to his former fiance. Anna then sees that his first concern would be for this heirloom, or rather, the woman wearing it. He puts his first thoughts on his loved ones. By the end of the picture, Anna understands that Declan is the man who truly shares her values, and that they could work together to create a beautiful life.

To Whom It May Concern

Watching movies at my house is very much a communal activity. I love nothing more than sitting down with my mom and sister on our couch in the basement watching a movie. Give me a bar of chocolate, a cup of tea, a few friends, and a good movie to achieve the best party. But of course, the biggest variable in this situation is the film. How do you find out if a movie is good besides watching it yourself? Though there are a wealth of sites and magazines that provide movie reviews, I know few people who can consistently trust one source’s opinions. Some reviews focus only on content, others only originality. Between the big-newspaper critics and the somewhat smaller Christian ones, the world of film criticism is torn apart by widely divergent views on whether a movie is worth the seven and a half dollars, or so,for a matinee movie ticket or five dollar for a movie rental. Such conflicting views confuses most potential audiences, and leaves them wondering, “Is this movie funny? WIll it give me peace from the fast-paced life I’ve been living?”

This is, however, really the wrong question. I have come to feel that watching a movie should become more than a mere escape from reality; rather, I believe that movies are an art form which attempt to shape our views of reality. Thus when trying to discover if a film is good, we must look at it artistically and ask, “What reality is this film asking me to live in? What is it asking me to do, to emulate?” I began to see that movies should be analyzed, just like art or music or literature, in order to be seen for what they really were, and that a movie which has not been analyzed cannot be truly enjoyed. After I began to see movies as an art form, I often thought of writing down my ideas, of sharing my analyses with others, but I never actually put my pen down on paper.

Then the film Leap Year came out. I went to see it with my mom and sister, and found a beautiful piece of art that I wasn’t expecting. We loved it. But we soon found that the world of movie critics felt quite differently than we did. I watched as film critic after film critic tore it apart, and then I began to feel that someone should defend such a good film. So, I have decided to start a blog to share my thoughts with anyone who will listen, or, rather, read. Here I will attempt to see a movie as a work of art and to understand that art’s meaning.

My methods shall be rather unorthodox. I will assume that readers have seen, or at least read a synopsis, of the film I am analyzing. Thus, there will be many “spoilers”, but I believe that this is in accordance with my purpose, since my goal is not to retell the story, but to explain my reading of it.

And so, without further ado, I invite you to join me in examining films to discover their true, artistic worth.