Change of Mind: Unorthodox Love

Now, I’m not saying that I’m shallow… because I’d like to think I’m not. But, before watching the film Once, I had never spent enough time thinking about all the different types of unorthodox love to realize the deep impacts they can have on a person’s life. The idea that love could be unromantic, but still pure and heartfelt was not something I had previously considered.

In our society, the idea of “love” carries a lot of baggage. Just saying the word out loud immediately brings pictures of hearts, chocolates, kisses, embraces, and every hue of pink and red to mind. That is to say, in mainstream culture, “love” is pretty much synonymous with “romance”. And, this is the kind of love that is always represented in the blockbusters—that true love that breaks down all obstacles. It is interesting to note here, too, that this love almost always involves some sort of physical contact as well. Holding hands, a peck on the lips, cuddling, and many times, much more. That one passionate kiss at the end of the movie is what seals the deal, makes you look at the person next to you and sigh, and leave the theatre with a satisfied, warm heaviness in your chest. Right?

That’s why I was surprised when I found myself having that same feeling when the credits started rolling for Once. Not once in that film did the man and woman ever have a moment of profound realization and then declare their love for one another, and there was definitely no passionate kiss. But it was a love story. They meant a lot to each other. But, was their love not quite “true”?

Of course I had heard of different kinds of love in the past, and the many ways it could shape one’s life. Just last year, while reading Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy Romeo and Juliet, we identified more than a dozen different forms of love, ranging from maternal and familial love to “carnal” love. But in the end, nobody mourns the loss of the maternal love between Juliet and her mother or her nurse… everyone cries because the “star-crossed lovers”, the romantic lovers, can never be together.

So, what was the deal with Once? According to this standard of “true”, romantic love, everything about the relationship between the guy and the girl and the ending of the movie should have prompted me to stand up and shake my fist at the projector, cursing the movie for lying to us by saying that this was a love story. But I didn’t. And that was because, by the time I had reached that point, I was convinced that they did love each other, but I was confused as to what that meant.

They had touched each other, without actually touching each other. That sounds so cliché, but that’s the best way to describe it. They opened each other’s minds up to new possibilities in their lives and shared an intimacy through their music that no one else could have experienced with them. To me, nothing about this is cliché.

The very fact that the type of love the guy and girl shared is hard to put into words tells us that it is not something most people consider to be love. But after this film, I would argue that this is the truest form of love because they each gave a little bit of themself to the other person in order to allow that person to do what he or she really wanted to do, what was best for them. And neither of them expected anything in return. Perhaps their relationship ended up being unorthodox, and maybe some dissatisfied viewers may accuse it of not being love at all, but now I’ve come to believe it was a million times more heartfelt than that blockbuster kiss.