Madam Speaker (speaking here to Nora Ephron, of course), the state of the rom com is strong.
That’s precisely how I hoped to start this piece. The line popped into my head while sitting on a northbound red line train well before I saw Celine Song’s Materialists, but I decided right then and there that, if I liked the film, that’s how I’d open any essay on the movie. But here’s the issue: this isn’t a rom com. In fact, I argue Materialists isn’t even a film about romance; it’s a film about love. And it’s not just a snapshot of love in modern times either; it’s Song’s thesis on how to confront that love, how to harness it, how to accept it.
In Materialists, Song isn’t interested in why we fall in love. It’s far too random to be rationalized. How many times does Lucy (Dakota Johnson) insist that love is mathematical, only for her claims to be continuously disproven? Love is irrational, antithetical to the modern data craze and alien to the overemphasis on logic in the age of information. Song insists love must be accepted rather than understood. Such thinking doesn’t come easy, nor does it come naturally. She knows this, and thus, opted to package her thesis within the familiar filmic structure of the rom com.
But, again: Materialists is no rom com. It’s structured exactly like one and it exists within the same framework of the Nora Ephron-era classics, but Song takes these structural tropes and flips them upside down. While talking-head style interviews may segment the film into distinct chapters (When Harry Met Sally), that’s just about the only rom com callback the Past Lives director doesn’t subvert.
The rom com uniquely hinges on an emotional climax. There’s thedance sequence in Dirty Dancing, the moment the Walls of Jericho fall in It Happened One Night, and famously, Harry Burns’ sprint through lower Manhattan to confess his love for Sally Albright in When Harry Met Sally: “I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts,” he says to her, “I love that after I spend a day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes, and I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night.”
On the surface, Materialists offer us something similar, but with a subtle twist. Here’s John’s (Chris Evans) version of the Billy Crystal speech he delivers to Lucy in the film’s final act: “When I look at you, I see wrinkles and grey hair and children who look like you.” Later he elaborates: “I love you. I just do. It’s the easiest thing … a lifetime guarantee … I’ll be your certainty,” he says.
Song’s characters look forward. Their declarations of love don’t explain their love; they promise it. Late in the film, John tells Lucy he’ll make a daily calendar item reminding him that he loves Lucy — a look, literally, to the future.
Projecting intentionality upon a subjective art is always slippery, but Song is far too intelligent of a filmmaker to create a film this blunt and obvious without the primary driver being its messaging. As she continues to structure the film around rom com tropes, she equally continues to subvert the audience’s expectations of the classic structure.
Consider the kiss, that initial dopamine hit, the moment our two protagonists finally act on their feelings. But in Materialists, Song gives us something of an anti-kiss. John and Lucy’s first (on-screen) kiss happens when they’re dancing at a wedding. They’re spinning one way, the camera the other, and the kiss occurs when all we can see is the back of John’s head; it’s not until they finally spin around that we see their lips interlocked. It’s unsatisfying. As an audience, it feels like we missed it. But before we know it, the kiss isn’t just over, but it also uncovers a disconnect: John wants to get back together. Lucy isn’t so sure. It’s as if Song is blasting an alarm: “This is not a rom com! This is not a rom com!” the alarm blares.
At the very root of the traditional rom com there lies a question: how are these two people going to fall in love? In Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, we know Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are going to end up together. What keeps us watching those films is the joy we get from watching two strangers fall in love. Materialists doesn’t even pretend to be interested in such riddles. While the film’s marketing may have teased a love triangle, within 20 minutes we know that the ever-charming Harry (Pedro Pascal) doesn’t stand a chance.
“You’re going to marry the love of your life,” Lucy tells a client who’s signed on for her matchmaking services. Just moments later she’s smoking a cigarette with John: “Are we soulmates?” he asks. “Probably,” she says. And thus, the trope is flipped. No longer is the audience curious whether Lucy and John fall in love: they’re already in love. Seconds later, when they take turns memorizing each other’s faces, their love is unquestionable. Now the question of the movie, what keeps us in our seats, is something else: “Okay, y’all are in love,” we think. “So what are you going to do about it?”
Well, one answer would be to get married — another classic rom com-ism. Materialists has a wedding — actually, it has three of them. At the first one, John and Lucy rekindle. At the second, they rehash. At the third — finally their own wedding — John and Lucy resolve. It’s here that Song’s break from rom com tradition is so blatant that it’s almost laughable. The wedding between our protagonists, nearly two hours into the film’s runtime, occurs after the film ends, as the credits roll.
It’s a wide shot, a single take scene where our protagonists are hardly the main characters. They exist only on the edges of the screen, inhabiting the borders of the city hall marriage floor, quite an unmaterialistic wedding venue. In fact, when John and Lucy finally do enter the scene, they’re hardly visible behind the white words rolling up the frame. They’re just two people in a room packed with couples — each taking turns cementing their love in a space that could easily be a bank. The scene isn’t about John and Lucy — it’s about love and the ubiquitousness of it, the commonality of it. Lucy and John are just two bodies in that scene: nothing special and yet everything special. It’s a sea of couples, none attempting to understand their love, but all deciding to act on it. It’s an infinity of two people, each promising to be the other’s certainty.
Materialists is now playing at Coolidge Corner Theatre, Somerville Theatre, Kendall Square Cinema, Apple Cinemas Cambridge, and all local multiplexes
