Materialists
I got a lot out of this film. It’s no Past Lives, sure, but that’s because it’s its own thing. And I swear if I hear broke boy propaganda another time I’m gonna scream. Did you miss literally everything Celine Song was saying?!?
It’s criminal that this film decided to market itself as a romcom, surely not a decision made by the creatives involved. This isn’t the return to 2000s romcoms as the marketing promised. Nor is it really a romance film, this is a film about romance.
I think a far more interesting lens to view Song’s sophomore feature through, is as a character study of Lucy. Lucy - played by the wonderfully talented Dakota Johnson - is the centrepiece of this movie and it’s through her that we explore just how complicated modern love is.
I found Lucy to be such an overwhelmingly compelling lead. The film doesn’t offer much explicitly in how Lucy has ended up the way she has when we are thrust into the story - apart from a very pivotal flashback (which is wonderful). Instead, it focuses on the nature of her life currently being due to the circumstances and expectations she’s placed on her life up until this point.
On the outside this woman seems incredibly happy. Why wouldn’t she be? She’s got a well paying job, she’s good at what she does, she seems well liked by people and has the confidence of somebody who is - at least to the naked eye - winning at life.
It’s only as you dig deeper into the film, as her life begins to become a tug of war, that her insecurities start to materialise. She’s managed to construct her life so perfectly in order to propel her into the life she truly wants. Never living, never really feeling, she’s on autopilot. She’s so focused on this goal of where she wants her life to be that she has put blinders up to the outside world.
Enter Harry, played by Pedro Pascal, the man of her dreams. The man who seems to be the key to unlocking this elusive, illustrious life that she so desperately craves. He’s the whole package; he’s rich, he’s handsome, he’s tall, he’s got a well paying job, in her mind she’s done it. She has manoeuvred herself into a career and onto a path that has led her to him - to her dream life. If only love were that simple.
Of course, their whirlwind romance satiates her for a period of time. The nice material things, the fancy dinners, the illustrious New York City apartment. It clearly scratches an itch that Lucy has been unable to reach, but suddenly the glamour fades, things that were one shiny suddenly seem hollow, and she’s faced to confront an emptiness that she has not had to think about probably ever in her life. Once you reach your goal, something you have be chasing since you were old enough to think, and it’s disappointing, what next?
Ah yes, confronted with the idea that the path she set out for herself was not fruitful, she has to forgo all of her logical instincts, she returns back to the simplest most human thing she could do, she allows herself to feel. It’s something so profound that Song touches on here. We as human beings are able to be logical and we’re able to be emotional. Often we let the former take control, after all there are certain things in life which - unless you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth - require hard work and logical thinking.
I think this is especially interesting in the context of who Lucy is as a character, being this professional put together woman. Society has told us all to be less emotional, to think rationally, but women especially seem to be more harshly criticised for expressing emotions as it’s so interlinked with femininity.
It’s written all over the movie how logical and procedural Lucy is about her entire life. This path that she set out for herself was only achievable if she followed strict rules, these rules are entirely of her own creation, but in her head are the solution to living a fulfilling life.
While it’s implicitly clear that these guidelines Lucy has set for herself have allowed her to secure this lifestyle for herself. It becomes apparent that being logical doesn’t necessarily make sense in all facets of life. When logic is applied to love, it can become clinical, and completely strips love of what makes it so special, that it’s a feeling.
It cannot be explained, or distilled, or put into checklist or criteria. When two people love each other, even when one person falls in love, it’s this concoction of feelings that we are unable to write down some equation for. It’s what makes it special, but it’s also what makes it hard, and it makes it very hard for somebody who’s constructed their whole life, who’s managed to succeed in their life, by being logical.
The commentary Song is making here is not an unobvious one. The character of Lucy can easily be mapped onto the modern dating landscape, and how we are so keen to distill people to stats and numbers, as if that’s the way that we will find love. This commentary then further expanded quite overtly into Lucy‘s job (and perhaps too explicitly in the prologue and epilogue). All of which is hammering home the idea that love is not something we are able to solve.
While this commentary is certainly interesting. I think viewing it this way strips Lucy of the complexities of what it is to be human.
This is why I think the movie works as a really fascinating character study, because we spend around half of the movie with this apparently fully formed Lucy. The self assured woman who knows who she is, and knows what she wants, and very slowly we see her start to waiver. Until, very sharply, she breaks, and suddenly we are left to pick up the pieces and find out who this person really is.
The movie also uses filmic language and cinematic styles to convey this message to us. The whole first half of the film feels very clinical. We have these more static shots of quite barren environments.
There’s a lot more harsh lighting featured, and even when there is more warm, softer lighting, it’s contextual. It’s relative to where Lucy is that in her mind. As her and Harry begin to get closer, they are physically more close in the movie. There is more of this softer light in scenes, but slowly that light begins to feel less natural. They’re in crowded spaces and they’re shot in wide, we don’t ever feel super intimate with them. We feel at a distant. They don’t feel as intimate, the world has not shrunk around them, they’re aware of other people around them.
They’re often at a distance from one another, and when they’re not; for instance when they are in bed together, isolated in these silk white sheets, that look unnatural Song manages to shoot them in such a way that they feel clinical, it doesn’t feel right.
This exact scene is then contrasted almost immediately with the bed of John, who has lived in sheets, and bed head, and sure, it maybe provokes thoughts on the wealth disparity between the two men, but it also feels more natural and real.
When we first meet John, we see him serving an unusual combination of drinks to Lucy, already signifying the closeness between them. The drinks aren’t fancy; it’s a beer and a Coke. In that instance, John has given Lucy material things but it’s not about those material things, it’s about what they mean. These material things have been imbued with meaning, with love, something that seems entirely void of the things Harry gives Lucy.
We get this gorgeous scene of Lucy and John talking outside the wedding where we first meet them and there’s a palpable chemistry between the two. The two actors linger on their words, they gaze at each other with the longing of love. Lucy proceeds to trace the outlines of Johns face, as if to signify that she, deep inside her, can still recall the contours of his face. He left a mark on her that runs so deep, even after so long she still remembers him, he became a part of her.
So when Lucy is confronted with the idea that she may no longer love Harry, or rather she comes to the realisation that she never really loved him, she’s forced to recall if she has ever felt that feeling. What is the feeling of love? How could she be so sure she doesn’t love Harry? and suddenly with the blinders now down, the ones she’s forced up in order to achieve this life she so desired, she can see that she did experience love. And no, it didn’t match any of her criteria, any of her checklist. It didn’t align with the future that she saw for herself, however at some point in her life she was lucky enough to find love, real true love.
Something she’s all too familiar with knowing that doesn’t happen all that often. Her job, her life is constructed around making people find love, but it’s rare that that actually happens. We even see this in the opening of the film, Lucy’s client who is getting married doesn’t really love the person she’s getting married to. She’s doing it to make her sister jealous. She may be in the business of love but it’s clear to her, or rather it’s subconsciously been clear to her and only starting to come to the surface, how it’s all a lie. The business of love is an innately flawed idea, as love can't be distilled into numbers.
The film has signifiers to show you how in love these two characters are. It shows how real and pure this love is. The camera becomes more dynamic. The scenes are filled with natural light. There is a warmth and a softness to the light that doesn’t give. The pair are shot in tight close-ups, there’s a physical intimacy between the two like a magnetic between Lucy and John that seems to want to bring them together.
It’s only in Lucy‘s fantasy life coming crumbling down that she’s able to realise what love truly is. She’s able to let herself feel for the first time. And this is why I think that flashback scene is so pivotal, it feels like the last time Lucy really allowed herself to feel. She clearly felt a deep love for John in that moment, but also was constructing this fantasy in her head that didn’t align with the life her and John were living. She was faced with two paths and she chose the path that had large walls surrounding it. They didn’t allow her to look around and feel. She was dialled in on that goal and once she reached the end of that path and realised there was nothing for her at the end of the path, that perhaps life doesn’t work out that way, it doesn’t work out on set paths, instead you have to let go and let yourself feel.
It’s only after these walls come down that she is able to open herself up to her feelings, to truly see what she has and not what she longs for. She no longer is marching along her path she set out for herself, shut off to the world. She slowly realises this love that she has for John, and it’s like all of a sudden, it clicks. She tells John “You’re the reason I know I’m capable of love” no only is she able to reflect in the present on her own feelings, but she’s able to look back in the past and understand and access feelings she had.
As Dakota Johnson put it in the movie, maybe a few too many times, love isn’t math, there’s no equations to our feelings of our heart. You simply need to let yourself feel. So yes, it’s not about material things, it’s not about wealth. And I honestly don’t think the movie is either, maybe in contradiction to the title of the film. The classes that they were born into and their financial situations dictated the starting place of our story, but at the end of the day it’s not about money, it’s not about material things, it’s about love.
Quick aside I think it would be really fascinating with this story what it would look like in the absence of John. If Lucy would still break up with Harry and come to this realisation that what she experienced wasn’t love, or perhaps because she had never accessed those emotions before, she wouldn’t know what love felt like.
Mapping this onto the metaphor in the idea of the modern day landscape, if people haven’t experienced love before and somebody does check all their boxes and they’re none the wiser what true love feels like do they just settle? Is it a relationship of convenience? Perhaps they don’t feel love but at least they check their boxes. If they’ve never experienced love to begin with they don’t know what they’re missing.