Amazing acting, musical score and directing comes together to portray love and its fragility
Sundance Film Festival's big winner, Like Crazy encompasses everything a typical love story should encompass; happiness, sadness, love, conflict and heart ache. All of love's little cliches can be found in this film, but it manages to get away with it because it's not glittered or decorated with predictable and "cheesy" script or dialogue. Instead, the film gets away with it through modest storytelling and keeping a real-life approach to its denouement. Writer-director, Drake Doremus created an honest and realistic romantic-drama, illustrating just how fragile love can be.
Like Crazy stars Anton Yelchin as Jacob and Felicity Jones as Anna - two young people, from different parts of the world, who fall in love while studying in their final year of university in Los Angeles. The opening minutes of the film show the awkward, yet adorable beginnings of the couple's relationship. Note-sharing, awkward coffee dates and long nights of drink-tasting and connection flourish into a promising love affair. Unfortunately, the happiness is short-lived, and eventually, Anna must face the reality of going back home to England.
For anyone who has fallen in love, being apart from that one special person can be the most difficult thing in the world. So, instead of leaving Jacob for two months to renew her visa, Anna decided to throw caution to the wind and stayed with her beloved Jacob, opting to leave at the end of the summer. Blinded by love and happiness, the couple made some poor decisions, which eventually led to the major problem surrounding the young couple.
After going back to England, Anna discovers that since she failed to meet the requirements of her visa, she could not visit Jacob or enter the US, commencing the onslaught of frustrating and heartbreaking chain of events surrounding the couples relationship.
With Jacob running a successful furniture business and Anna slowly writing her way to the top of a local magazine, the two begin to realize the struggles of balancing their responsibilities and keeping their fragile love together.
Doremus had Yelchin and Jones improvise a lot of their dialogue to create more natural performances. It was obvious because of the simple prose and everyday language that the two used. Their performances were amazing and they really defined their characters and made them their own. They were really unpolished and raw representations, true to form and it's authenticity was very enjoyable. It just moulded perfectly with the realistic style of storytelling Doremus presented throughout the film. Jones was rewarded by Sundance with a special jury prize for best actress, and after viewing her performance, it was clearly an award well earned.
This review would be amiss if the musical score by Dustin O'Halloran wasn't mentioned. The score complimented the story perfectly and really added to those already emotional and candid scenes. In many romantic-drama films, music can be overdone and overused, but each composition comes in at the most opportune moment and never more. The film itself has a very nice, natural-sound silence to it, which makes for a natural, life-like view, but the score adds to it's appreciation when O'Halloran's pieces do come up.
Like Crazy may not stack up to the likes of romance blockbusters like The Notebook, but it certainly defines just how fragile and vulnerable love can be. This story of first loves dives into everything a first love should be; nerve-racking, heart pounding, and uncertain. The uncertainty of this couple's fate is what really drives this film from beginning to end. With so much love between the two, it's almost impossible to think that it won't work out. But throw in 5,000 miles of distance and the undeniable variables that may present themselves, Like Crazy shows just how difficult it is to make love work, but at the same time, shows what any person is willing to do when blinded by love.
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Let me know what you guys thought of the film and whether or not you agree or disagree with my review!
Like Crazy - Official Trailer [HD]
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