Husbands and Wives

I must say that after watching this film, I have a better understanding about what married life must be like. It's difficult to say you know when you really don't have a clue, but that doesn't mean you don't know what real love and respect is all about, and that with the right tools a beautiful relationship can't survive. This Woody Allen film poses many great questions about relationships and communication in general, however quite a morbid and skewed perception of what marriage and love on the whole may be like. It's probably part of the reason why the film most times were completely hilarious; Woody has that gift of being able to show comedy through tragedy, make it thought-provoking, yet always at the end he is left alone. It seems to me that he likes sad endings, or that's his way of making a twist; because they're always the same outlook. He is completely talented, lovable, but always the whiney, "I don't know why the world hates me" type of attitude, that if you're not careful, viewers also can be sucked into that negative, 'woe is me' kind of outlook for life in general.

This film was extremely clever, as all Woody Allen films usually are, the content and script/dialogue/conversation, extremely brilliant, the camera techniques, deliberately jerky and I completely love the way his characters/actors are always as realistic as humanly possible. I always tend to see New York settings and actors more natural, as opposed to Hollywood style and often incredulously glamorous characters; which isn't wrong or right, but just different. I enjoy both, because you take away singular emotions/feelings with it, but I certainly prefer more natural because it's closer to real life, as even when people pretend their hardest, life isn't always glamorous. I have noticed also that people have used this style in films of interviewing characters on what their feelings are about others, which I absolutely find irresistible because it makes the audience feel as though they're bonding with each person and as though it is even a real situation as opposed to just a director's perspective in a story.

Husbands and Wives was about 2 couples and friends who wondered what it would be like to be single again after spending many years together, about questioning about what their relationship was about, and I would say mostly when hitting that 'mid-life crisis' in wondering if they've still got it and they're insecure on what they have or don't have. I would have loved to play Sally's role, because for me she was the most entertaining character. She was eccentric, funny and well cultured, however someone who definitely needed to be married. After splitting from her husband and dating the yummy Leam Neeson, she realized that she was in fact in love with her pudgy husband all along. The film showed how it was easier for an older man in the dating role than for an older woman, because according to the wives, once they began showing their age, they were just thrown out the window. How the mid-life crisis is probably a quest of unfulfilled dreams or lost youth; of how you become friendly and close with people but in fact you don't even really know them. About how one becomes tired of being corrected and criticized, that it becomes as though one is always on an audition, however once you've had roots planted so deep it's difficult to be set free, however you see who your real mate is when you see how they deal with you in time of crisis and where their priorities may lie. Is work/extra-curricular activities/classes more important than your mate if they need you? It spoke about how Love is not about passion and romance only, but about companionship and communication and about being willing to compromise or change for the better, because if you don't you'll just shrivel up inside. You can't overlook some things because it will never go away; you have to face it head on.

Funny parts of the film I'd like to mention would be:

"Como case women crash their plane and you die along with them because they crash their plane into you!"

"Some people are foxes and some people are hedgehogs!"

"Your IQ is suddenly in remission."

"You should have been born in the 1800's."

"Get in the car, you infant!"

And the last words/manuscript narrated by Woody in the end were quite beautiful and went like this:

"The heart raged and demanded, got melancholy and confused. And to what end? To articulate what nit-wit strategy? It told him something about mind-boggling numbers of sperm that competed for a single egg. It was not the other way around. Of course men would make love at any time and place with any number of women including total strangers. While females were more selective. They were in each case conforming to the demands of only one small egg, while each male had millions and millions of frantic sperm screaming wildly let us out, please, let us out now!

Like those desperate ads in the Personal's column with a dozen requirements and if they were not enough, there was added: Must be a non-smoker. Felman longed to meet a woman who attracted him physically and have a following personality, a quick sense of humour, equal to his love of sports, equal to his love of classical music, equal to his with a particular with a liking to Bach and balmy climates. He thought he wanted himself but as a pretty woman.

Pepkin married and raised a family. He led a warm and domestic life, placid but dull. Nap was a swinger; he skewed nuptial ties and was in bed with 5 different women a week. Students, housewives, nurses, actresses, a doctor, a sales girl. You name it, Nap held it between his legs. Pepkin from the calm of his fidelity envied Nap. Nap lonely beyond belief envied Pepkin.

What happened, after the Honey Moon was over? Did the desire really grow with the years? Or did familiarity cause partners to long for other lovers? Was the notion of ever deepening romance a myth we had all grown up on? Along with simultaneous orgasms? The only time Ripkin and his wife experienced a simultaneous orgasm was when the judge handed them their divorce. Maybe in the end, the idea was not to expect too much out of life!"

My final words are, that there must be plenty of truth, however when you've seen relationships that work, when you've been raised in a culture and society where the majority are able to withstand the hurricanes, when you yourself have experienced true love, then no-one can tell you otherwise, because your life is what you want it to be. You have to believe in love if you want it, and when you do find that love, you have to work respectfully and fervently to make it work. True love can stand the test of time; your intuition also never lies, so if both parties are not in it to win it, and do things hurtful and unbelievable, you know that it wasn't true love to begin with. The way you want to be treated, is how you should treat your mate. If your mate is sad or down, offer them comfort, you may not be able to take away their pain or their bruises but can kiss them, embrace them and help them to feel better. If someone breaks that trust or someone doesn't have your feelings/happiness high on their priority list, and cannot make sacrifices for you, then it's not even worth it. Love in a relationship goes way beyond what we see in the movies; growing up with 2 parents who love each other has taught me that. Sure they have opposing views and stop talking from time to time [hahah] but in the end, they're respectful, inseparable, their love is everlasting and they would never do something that would breach that love, trust and commitment to each other; a fire that can burn forever; a love that can never be synched. J