Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991)

[Palimelon]

Often referred to as "the thinking person's Ghost", it's really a dramedy that is a moving meditation on love, grief, loss, and moving on. And to be fair, I love both movies, in different ways.

 

[Browncoat]

Oh, I love this one!  I think it was the one that really made me... take notice... of Alan Rickman.

[Sandman]

How I love this movie! Rickman and Juliet Stevenson are both wonderful in it. 

[Palimelon]

Yeah, they had great chemistry together.

[voiceover]

One of my favorite scenes is the afterglow-morning together, where they play the titular word game, and Jamie loses (“ ‘Deeply’! You passed on ‘deeply’!…”), and has to pay the forfeit.  Which is him strumming his cello like a guitar and singing “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” while Nina dances.

It’s so very, completely, absolutely, fucking charming.  You see in those few minutes, everything they were together.

[paramitch]

This is one of the few movies I can actually recite. ("Mostly when I'm walking... or anyway, by myself..." is how it starts.)

I love it so much, and rewatched it many, many times in my 20s and 30s because it simply gave me so much joy. It also kickstarted my adoration for the late Anthony Minghella (gone too soon) and continued my lifelong crush on Rickman (so great to see him as a rare romantic lead here!).

The movie is a lovely romance, but it's more than that -- it's simply filled with warmth and tenderness for its characters, and for people in general. It exudes a palpable love of music, and as a lifelong cellist, it meant so much to me to see Nina and Jamie communicate their love and passion for each other through music -- through the Bach they play together, through the songs they sing, music simply speaks for them.

I also adore Nina and she feels so real to me as a character. Juliet Stevenson is AMAZING, and she makes Nina feel like a genuine person, one whose grief is tearing her apart, but who still has great joy for life and living. I love Nina's relationship with Maura her filmmaker friend, and their English lesson and walk is so lovely as they look at the clouds in the sky or visit the cafe.

The movie to me feels so warm and loving toward its characters -- toward Jamie, Nina's sweetly grumpy boss, the lovestruck Russian maintenance man, her filmmaker friend, her sister and nephew, Mark the magician/teacher and his students, and so many others. I love Nina's "hopping" first date with Mark (his cheerfully casual line, "Attempted suicide at the age of seventeen -- can't remember why, was sad about something!" is just so weirdly funny). There are so many beautiful little visual moments -- Maura and Nina looking at the big blue sky, the men doing her dishes together and worrying about her, the Russian dancing in her living room, Nina and Jamie cloudwatching in the window, etc.

I get a little frustrated with how fast Mark tries to move forward with her (I also prefer Michael Maloney with his HENRY V hairstyle -- the floppy bowl haircut here doesn't do much for me), as he's a little pushy. And I also get a little frustrated with Nina when she quickly (too quickly?) seems to forget what life with Jamie was really like -- or to see what he's actually doing (kindly making it easier to get over him).

But oh, man, that final scene between Nina and Jamie, when he recounts their first night together to her, and Nina recites the Neruda poem ("The Dead Woman") to him:

Forgive me.
If you no longer live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul all night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping,
but I shall go on living

On 9/17/2024 at 7:03 PM, voiceover said:

One of my favorite scenes is the afterglow-morning together, where they play the titular word game, and Jamie loses (“ ‘Deeply’! You passed on ‘deeply’!…”), and has to pay the forfeit.  Which is him strumming his cello like a guitar and singing “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” while Nina dances.

It’s so very, completely, absolutely, fucking charming.  You see in those few minutes, everything they were together.

This is absolutely the perfect encapsulation of what makes that scene so lovely. Beautifully put! It's all right there -- the playfulness, the way they speak and interact through music, the palpable love... sniffle.

[proserpina65]

A friend and I use "practically completely silent" all the time.

On 9/29/2024 at 7:55 AM, paramitch said:

But oh, man, that final scene between Nina and Jamie, when he recounts their first night together to her, and Nina recites the Neruda poem ("The Dead Woman") to him:

Forgive me.
If you no longer live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul all night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping,
but I shall go on living

Never has Pablo Neruda seemed so sexy.  And between this film and Il Postino, he was having something of a renaissance in the early 80s.

I love that even Jamie's fellow ghosts all felt like fully-drawn characters rather than just props.

[paramitch]

2 hours ago, proserpina65 said:

Never has Pablo Neruda seemed so sexy.  And between this film and Il Postino, he was having something of a renaissance in the early 80s.

I love that even Jamie's fellow ghosts all felt like fully-drawn characters rather than just props.

I agree on the Neruda. The poem is about so much love and passion -- the kind that will never completely die even in grief or after death. And Jamie's monologue there is so damn sexy and beautiful. "And when we finally kissed, which was at six o'clock the next morning, we were both trembling so hard we couldn't get our clothes off." (I'm paraphrasing but I think that's it)

And I love the movie aficionado ghosts! "Fitzcarraldo or Five Easy Pieces? Fitzcarraldo! Fitzcarraldo!"

I especially love how they just stand quietly with Jamie at the end, surrounding him with love as he cries and watches Nina go off with Mark.

[Browncoat]

I really want to watch this again now.

[proserpina65]

22 hours ago, paramitch said:

And I love the movie aficionado ghosts! "Fitzcarraldo or Five Easy Pieces? Fitzcarraldo! Fitzcarraldo!"

My BFF and I have a running joke about a review of the film where the critic confused Five Easy Pieces with Five Graves To Cairo.  Yes, we've watched the movie a lot, three times at the theater when it came out.  Alternating it and Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.  It was the summer of Alan Rickman.