Up... up... up...
I have three bathrooms to clean, two more beds to cover in new sheets and a bazillion little items to organize, but I instead I will now write about this little piece of music...
Before I watched the movie "Up" I knew it was about an old guy flying in a house. Besides that I had no clue and didn't really expect a whole lot besides the usual excellent Pixar-quality of filmmaking. Only there in the first half hour they dropped this whole montage on me, about how the old man met and married his wife years ago and how they passed through the years doing the mundane boring marriage things as well as going through some terrible pain all the while being each other's best, faithful friends until the inevitable end. The music above envelopes this montage in a way that immediately upon watching you realize you have just witnessed one of those rare, magical historic moments in film. The old fashioned waltz and gentleness of it elevate the scenes away from reality just so that you only feel the bottom line: the love of those two people. The music is light, then sad and then continues hopeful but inevitably tinged with the heaviness that comes with having gone through it all. It left me completely breathless to be honest.
Surely it has something to do with the fact that I'm married and can relate... but I have to say I don't know that I've seen marriage summed up so perfectly on film before in such a charming and touching way. The rest of the movie has more of that but also lots of adventure and jokes and things that have to be appealing to people of all ages, the single as well. So it's not like it pales in comparison, but like I said, these few minutes are just a league of its own.
On screen most of the time marriage is portrayed like a drag, a trap, an "institution" that is ultimately unrealistic, impossible... save for a few lucky couples who just happened to be a perfect match. Marriage is usually the end of the movie, the end of the love story, what "every girl wants" (gag), because when it's time to present it as something beautiful aside from the wedding it gets complicated. Who wants to go there really. Also, people who've been married for a long time are old and old people don't do so well with the audience apparently.
In this movie however most of it is just hinted at, but you can see the old man being so faithful to his wife, clueless as he is lots of times and ridden with regret at the end, but he is there, she is there, they are there... all those little things that don't involve the great gestures or the sweeping passions. They truly love each other. It's not easy to be married for many years, I can see that, but it can be harder if you're looking for happiness in the wrong places. Maybe sometimes you can count on your hand the days in a year you felt swept off your feet. But if you turn around the days your spouse was faithfully yours will turn out to be exactly 365. You show up for each other in the consistency in which you show support, sometimes with beautiful words and lots of times with the mere fact of continuing to get up in the morning and hold on to your promise despite the exhaustion and weariness. It is friendship, but it goes beyond that. The act (and I mean act as in concious act, not a lame habit) of faithfulness returns you to the beginning of your romance. Whatever you felt in the beginning takes on a new depth every time and you find yourself repeating: "I didn't know it could get even better..." year after year.
I don't think there is a "secret" to a true marriage, although there is mystery. You just have to show up for it day after day after day. Then comes a movie like "Up" and sums it up perfectly in four minutes and three-quarter time and you are left in a puddle on the couch.
Posted at 04:47 PM on March 05, 2010