This post is because @dicentra asked what love is to us in her BLOG. I posted an earlier version, but it felt very incomplete, so this is the rewrite.
Essentially after thinking and drafting in Notes, I thought of this scene from the end of Life On the Road (2016, SPOILER). It was a spinoff from the original UK version of The Office, featuring the same main character - the almost impossibly obnoxious, almost certainly delusional, but almost painfully lovable David Brent. You may wonder where the hell I'm going with this, but the scene is beautiful and I hope it will be worth reading about. So this is the final scene of the movie:
David has just spent everything he has making his dream of rock stardom a reality, by hiring a band and going on tour. All the way, he has put up with being rejected by his band mates - who avoid him like the plague, bleed money from him, generally half-ass the whole thing - and the one time they have a drink with him, they make him pay them, then down their drinks and fuck off. It's heartbreaking. He gets booked for Shite Night - hardly the rock stardom he dreamed of. But he doesn't let it get him down, he just keeps going, with his painful, nervous laughter - over and over, discouragement after discouragement, holding on to his dream and acting like it's already real. This is the first love - the love of life. He says: "I can live without being a success, but I couldn't have lived without trying - and I did that." He had a dream that meant everything to him, and he gave everything he had for it because he couldn't live if he didn't. He says at one point that if he worked overtime, and saved up for 9 months, he could do his disastrous, unsuccessful tour again. That is pure Nietzsche. You would do it all again.
His description "Life's a struggle, with little beautiful surprises, that make you want to carry on, through all the shit, until the next little beautiful surprise" is in itself so beautiful. But the nervous laugh he couldn't hold in at the end of that line fucking kills me every time. He loves life for its beautiful surprises, and I think at some point, we all have a realisation like that. As I have found to my cost, if you don't love life, everything is a pitch black void and you miss so much. You miss everything.
But I picked this scene for many more reasons still to unpack.
There's the way Nigel loves David. They connect, as they are both largely rejected, ignored or despised by the rest of the office, and frequently put down. But they build each other up like brothers. Each gives the other something they need. Nigel is emotionally intelligent and very aware when he says "What resilience, from a human being!" (another line that always hits me in the feels). They encourage each other, they get enthusiastic about each other. They have their unique ways of interacting, that makes them like comrades. And they don't let each other miss an opportunity.
Then there's the way Karen loves David. Ricky Gervais uses Mandeep Dhillon for the exact same kind of role in After Life (Netflix, 2022). She's the warm-hearted, kind, capable, beautiful person who is outside Brent's circle but she sees, through the 'I'm-dying-inside' smiles, right into his heart. She has the ability to look beyond all that's obnoxious about him, and see what's underneath. And her seeing creates a caring. And her caring causes emotions and empathy. When she tears up about the way he is treated, it's one of my all-time favourite movie moments. Out of her heart she wishes him well, and she hopes he is happy. His suffering is her sadness. And just look at her delighted, fascinated smile when he walks off with Pauline.
Despite the excruciating things that happened to him, Brent's tour created opportunities for the young rapper, Dom, and for his chronically-ungrateful band - this is what happens when we try. And maybe it's the universe's way of loving us. Because we can create beautiful surprises as often as we receive them. The best beautiful-surprise moment of the film was a redemptive one, for one of the band. He finally decided to show up for Brent, after weeks of bleeding him dry. I'll leave you to watch that if you feel like it. But it's a reminder that genuine, authentic resiliance can affect the way we are seen.
For the very final sequence of the film, we see Pauline reveal her romantic love for Brent. And Brent, for all his rockstar ambition, has been completely oblivious to her admiration. She just wants to be around him. Even if that's by going to his gig and supporting him when he has no idea she is there. She loves him so much that it brings out the part of her that will stand up for him, even though she is clearly quiet and introverted. It's a great detail how you see her anger build the first time he is insulted -and then one of the most satisfying drink-throws ever. I wonder what really happened in Brent's heart when she did that.
Like Karen, she has seen him -and through all his flaws, and the world against him, she's just waiting for him to say yes. I love the ending. She's showing interest in everything he cares about. Essentially, giving him the attention and affirmation he has always been desperate for - the desperation that fuelled his entire tour, I would say. She's asking him questions and sharing his passion. And he's getting inspired by that - even though they are just going to Costa, he is talking about stars and the universe. And she takes his hand.
