From the moment Jacob (Anton Yelchin) meets Anna (Felicity Jones) in their college English class, he falls for her provocative and feisty British voice, literally. She’s from the UK and she’s attending University here. The chemistry between the two is instantly apparent, sending us immediately back to the moments of our own young, desperate, and impatient love. And that’s the problem, if you don’t have patience….all kinds of things can go wrong.
“Like Crazy” chronicles love just one step beyond, because of the many annoyances brought on by loving somebody abroad. Translation: Visa issues. When Anna defies her mother who warns her about how customs really works, Anna’s about to find out the hard way.
Like the engraved bracelet Jacob gives Anna with the word “Patience” the two represent a generation where everything must be “right now.” But the cost of plane tickets, and even the crunch of time zones to have scheduled phone sex, soon finds the audience wanting to reprimand them to move on and find another twenty year old. After all, at that age, love is just around the next corner. Again.
But while enduring love is questionable, it’s their performances that are very real and raw as they capture the heartbreak and helplessness of lust and longing, compounded by long distance. As the movie progresses, their lives become consumed with the stresses and realities instead of the flighty head-over-heels feelings that one can only endure for so long. The film appropriately transitions on how laws and delayed paperwork can eat away at what they want. Distance makes the heart grow fonder before turning into out-of-sight-out-of-mind. It’s about being “there” in spirit but at the same time being elsewhere of body and memory. Or memories that can be deliberately blocked.
There are a million romances out there and we all have our favorites, both on and off screen, but this film works on a very real life playing field without the tricks of terminal illness, affairs or the usual cast of manipulations that require a kleenex. In this, we learn that love simply hurts. All good things come to an end. Or do they? Three tiaras