The Blower's Daughter is an awesome song

Closer was a surprisingly good movie. There seems to be nothing much to it save for confusion, illusions, fickleness and superficial love, all presented in the messed up, tangled lives of four people: a stripper, a fickle-minded photographer, a perverted asshole and a sad, sorry soul who thinks he understands love by recognizing it to be a complex something.

It has it's hilarious moments, mostly those involving Clive Owen's character. He had his share of pityful and heart-breaking moments too when he just cried in front of Anna. Dan, on the other hand, is, I swear, a deranged loser. Come on, we all knew it from the start when he said he wanted to be a writer but had to write for the obituaries due to a lack of talent. Okay, maybe not, I'm just kidding. But he's the one who jumped from one person to another the most, thinking he loves them.

I don't know what exactly made it so but near the end, when Dan and Alice were in the hotel room and just talking, you almost think, "That's it. Glad it's now going to work out good for them." Until Dan suddenly goes Doctor P.A. (perverted asshole, sorry I forgot his name) on Alice. However, when he ran back and picked up that rose, you still think it's going to end up all okay for him and Alice. Until Alice suddenly realizes that she doesn't "love" him anymore. (Those were seemingly heartfelt "I love You"s that Dan dished out. But he said that to Anna too. And they seemed tragically, heartfelt too.) What I'm pointing at is an example of how the movie gets the audience involved, no matter how evil, sex-starved, or superficial the characters may seem. (Or maybe just me.)

I think a certain wonder I found in the movie is that it appears interesting, at some level, no matter how unextraordinary the situation, or characters, may seem. Being able to sit back and watch the complex, or not-so-complex, interplay of illusion and sudden realizations (built around the recognition of illusions) has a certain charm to it. It may not be in a movie or a play, and it's just the same. If it's not that being able to see the whole picture and watch and sit back, this certain charm the movie has may be from the acting. They were all good and natural. Natalie Portman was not Natalie Portman, she was just a stripper look a like. And that wasn't Jude Law, it's a hopeless wannabe writer who seems to love every woman he's attracted to. And Julia Roberts? Well, that was Julia Roberts. (Just kidding :D I thought she did good too. And Clive Owen too, he was just crazy in that movie.)

Anyway, the movie breaks a cliche in that honesty doesn't keep couples together (do you really think some guy will stick to his wife if, even from the start, she informs him of an affair? Maybe. But come on...) Also it presents the words "I Love You" as a mere phrase that isn't as immaculate as it seems. It's like the other side of "I Love You" that spawns broken hearts and broken souls, disgusting secrets and dark lies, tragedy-bound illusions, or nothing at all.

Lastly, isn't it tragic how Dan (Jude Law) and "Alice" (Natalie Portman) met as strangers and parted ways, still, as strangers?

You know what, this movie and post just inspired me to write a short on fickle "love," minus the sex talk, that I shall call "I Love You All Over Again." And yes, it's going to be sad. Again.