Films as a Love Language

there's something special about seeing someone you love in a piece of art

Movies helped raise me. Whether it was family movie night, watching Christmas movies before everyone came over for dinner, or going to the theater as a family or with my friends, they’ve always been this piece of my life. They have always been a part of me. Movies connect me not only to the world I haven’t explored but to the people around me and across the globe. I’ve traveled to New York, Sweden, Australia, Korea, and countless private corners of the world just through a screen. Maybe it’s stupid, maybe it’s chronically online. But maybe it’s special. I’d like for it to be special.

To me, there is this beauty in that connection. In the way that movies are this universal language that anyone can find themselves in. I can watch a movie from the 70s and think of my father. He was the one who taught me to love movies. From sitting me down and having Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon be the first movie I ever watched to now when he buys his beloved westerns and car chase movies from his childhood to show to me and we sit in the living room, in silence but sharing something. FIlm binds me, especially to my father, he thinks I can do anything, and becoming a director is something he believes I can do. When I watch movies I often think of him and he’s always heard my ideas and read my screenplays first. Even in our worst moments, I can think about his love for movies which translates into his love for me. Often it’s unspoken, but it’s there. And I can watch a musical and see my mother’s joy and I can watch a sci-fi and see my brother be passionate about something. Movies carry my love for people through them, where I fail to express it, I can find a movie that I hope will. Film binds me to the people and world around me. I see people’s passions and love when they say they love this movie or that movie. I see my parent’s childhoods and the silent connections my brother and I have. Every time I show someone a movie I love or vice versa it’s like sharing a little piece of yourself, it’s vulnerable in a way. In a non-pretentious way, I do think art of all forms allows us to share our most sacred pieces of ourselves, pieces that maybe we don’t even realize we have but we know we have this urge to share this film or this song with someone and proclaim our love from rooftops because what we love, becomes us.

Growing up this was especially big for me. I’ve always been so much younger than everyone else so I turned to movies to form connections with people. I sat down and watched the extended editions of Lord of the Rings to talk with my dad, I watched every Star Wars movie over and over to spend time with my brother and I still beg him to watch every Star Wars show or movie with him. I even forced him to go see The Rise of Skywalker with me just to say we saw it together. My mom has always been a bit more difficult. Even though I see her and me in countless movies (especially Petite Maman) I’ll probably never show her them because I fear she won’t care or like them. She doesn’t love movies the way I do, so since I was a kid I’ve searched and searched for movies she might love. From Mamma Mia, Burlesque (which I watched too young I think), The Wizard of Oz, and Dirty Dancing we rewatch her favourites over and over even if I have no connection to them, I long to be close to my mom. So it was when I had gotten my wisdom teeth out and I was so loopy and sad from the medication and she laid with me in her bed and let me show her Little Miss Sunshine, Where the Wild Things Are and we rewatched Wall-E together that I felt I finally succeeded in showing her something I loved that she would too. I miss those days often when it was just me and her in her room watching movies as I fell asleep. But it didn't really end, as a few weeks later she let me drag her along with my dad and me to watch The Batman on opening night at 10 pm. I finally felt like I’d broken through something with my mom and me, that maybe we’d be closer through the movies we now shared. “With Mom and Dad” is my most used letterboxd tag, from movies I wanted to ones they wanted, our relationships wouldn’t be the same without them. And that hunger for connection that led me into the wider world of movies comes from how I’ve seen my parents love movies and wanting them to love me the same. Movies rarely let them down, but I constantly do. If I could be a movie and just be simple and loved forever I would. I wish I could. I often wonder if they love movies more because they don’t see me in them, they don’t see their faults that I carry. They see something perfect, created from the hands of someone they don’t know. I don’t know. They do love me and I love them, more than I can say. I just sometimes worry about what we would be without movies, without someone else to bridge what we cannot say out loud because it’s just too hard.

The thing is, this pattern carries over into my friendships as well. I took my friends at the time to go see The Last Jedi when it came out only to find out none of them had seen a Star Wars movie before and they only watched it because it was something I loved. While this friend group is long gone for good reasons I still fondly remember our quiet times shared in movie theatres across the city, before anything bad happened, when we were still girls together and we could cry over Christopher Robin, and see Sing in 3D for no real reason. Sometimes I wonder if there’s a movie I could’ve shown to keep us together if there was something we could’ve seen ourselves in and fixed our problems before its ultimate end. But I don’t think it would’ve been for the best. Although I still watch movies now like Super Dark Times and mourn my friendships with them, with one of them specifically, along with Zach and Josh. I used to seek movies like this, to feel comforted that maybe I wasn’t in the wrong or that other people go through this, to feel comforted in my loss.

But I no longer long for movies that show the destruction of friendships. I no longer relish in my anger and sadness of losing someone I once held so dear. I no longer miss my best friend who is now a stranger although she lives down the street. I’m content with losing our shared dreams and the future we thought would always include the other. I’ve grown out of the movies we shared and that’s okay. They’ll always have those memories and that place in my heart. I like to remember the light parts of the past now.

Sharing movies with my current friends remains one of my greatest joys. When we gather for a movie night and watch the most random movies from our childhoods or some Oscar-Winner just because. Our double features of Gnomeo and Juliet and Little Women are so special to me. It’s the times when we find the most similarities between us, our differences are largely forgotten and we just love the same thing, at the same time. And I see them in their favourite movie and if I rewatch it, I think of them and it makes me happy. I’m glad I exist, that they exist and we get to live our lives alongside each other, I love them. It carries onto social media when we time it just right and my friend miles and miles away watches a movie at the same time as me and it’s the same feeling I get when I’m on my couch watching a movie with a friend. Letterboxd invokes the same love I have, I get to see what movies the people I love, love. I read their reviews no matter how silly or serious and I add them to my own watchlist just to share their love for something.

I don’t know if this is sweet or maybe a little weird and socially inept. I’ve never been good with words or even touching so I seek someone else, something someone has made to express something for me. I see this in my own aspirations for filmmaking. I don’t long for fame or greatness, I don’t think I’ll ever make the best movie of all time and I’m okay with that. I just long to make something that moves people, or even just one person. For someone to see a movie I wrote and directed and feel something or see themselves in it and feel the love I feel for movies and how they connect me to the world. To me, that’s what film is about. Not greatness and awards but to know that someone in the world saw it and to them it was their favourite movie, or it had a line that they’ll write in their journal and carry with them forever or a character that they see themselves in and have hope for their older or younger self. I want someone to watch a movie I made and feel the way I felt when I saw My Own Private Idaho for the first time and the way I cried when I got to see it in theater. That maybe I’ll inspire someone the way Cassavetes, the Safdie Brothers, Julia Duournau, and countless others did me.

I think I rambled quite a bit here. In the simplest way, movies and the way you can dive into different genres and artists’ work just fills me with love. I spent a long portion of my youth relishing in anger and sadness and I don’t want to be that girl anymore. I surround myself with people I love and I found how much I love movies and art and people and life. I’m grateful to be in a time that I can see all of these different movies, new and old, with people I hold dear to my heart. And I can enjoy them with the time I have on earth and they will be a part of me from my childhood until the day I either hate them or die. And I never see myself hating every movie so it will be until death due us part. As silly and long as this all was, I just love art and the world and I’m genuinely happy to be around these days.

I love movies.

I love you.

I’m glad I exist.