Has LTROI Changed Your Attitude About Love?

[a_contemplative_life]

This topic has probably been raised in several different ways on other threads, but maybe not so directly.

For my part, I would say that seeing LTROI has made me take a broader view of what love is. It's a little hard to explain what I mean by this, but I guess that I have tended to be more attuned to the expression of love in smaller and more subtle ways than before, and to find beauty where perhaps before I would only have seen ugliness.

Also, I feel that I have come to appreciate the importance of being receptive to the expression of love by others. I am trying to be a better listener, and a more patient listener. I am also trying to be more thoughtful about what I want to say before I say it.

Finally, I think I have also been reminded of the important role that forgiveness plays in fostering human love, because no one can ever express their love perfectly, or in a way that is always free of some degree, however small, of self-interest.

When my children ask me why I spend so much of my time thinking about LTROI or reading the posts on this site, I try to explain to them that the film is a love story, and that it interests me to read what other people have to say about the love story and about human love in general. I suppose these are the main reasons that I continue to review all of the posts here.

[Microwave Jellyfish]

It kinda made me not believing in it. Whenever I read the book I think that yeah, this is very realistic, and it all happens in real life, except for the vampires and that kind of deep love - one of them is too horrifying, the other's way too beautiful to be true.

Not very healthy way of thinking, I know, but there's not much to do about it. Maybe with time it will change.

[Lacenaire]

The film has not changed my attitude to love or my view of it. If anything, perhaps my view of love changed the film for me, meaning that I actually saw it in a certain way because of my view of love.

Essentially, for me love is above all about sacrifice. The only general statement I can make about "true love" is that to "truly love" someone is to love that person more than you love yourself.(It is an interesting question whether one can love beer more than oneself. It seems that some people love smoking more than they love themselves but then this could be just addiction. Perhaps Hakan was "addicted" to Eli). In other words, it is to do more than the Great Commandment <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Commandment> instructs you to do.

Thus I saw love in the film for the first time at the moment Eli ate the sweet. That was, of course, only the first buds of love. Since that point on I saw Oskar's and Eli's love in terms of sacrifices they make for one another - which is why I found the idea of Eli having any selfish aims so destructive to everything I liked about the film. Also, because of this, I could never conceive of any continuation of the film beyond the train - because in my view Eli's love for Oskar, once it fully blossoms after Lacke's death, makes it impossible to kill anyone anymore except in defence of Oskar. This in turn means that she can't survive much longer (unless somehow cured of her vampirism). Anyway, I find that all such considerations tend to undermine the film, which is why I have decided not to engage in them anymore.
(All the above is also one more reason, beside the ones I have already stated, why I dislike the novel - I don't find it compatible with my view of love.)

So the answer is: no, the film has not changed my view of love. It did, however, produce a lot of emotional turmoil inside me, both at the time of watching it the first time and on subsequent occasions. This "turmoil" involved a pretty complex mixture of emotions so that even today I have not fully managed to sort them out. All kind of things are involved: memories of childhood, violence, tenderness, sexuality, and of course love. Each of these is a possible theme for a whole essay - but for the time being I have had my fill of that.

I don't think, however, that the film has had any lasting effect on me, at least in the sense of fundamentally changing my view of anything (except perhaps on how to make a great film). What it does do when I watch it, is to produce a certain temporary magic, inducing a certain emotional state which is quite unlike the state I am normally in. Personally I think that is all you can really expect a work of art to do: if it does more than that it may be perhaps a little unhealthy, like, er... an infection

[drakkar]

Yes, I suppose so. It has deepened up my sense of love. It also has made me more conscious about the strength of love when it is something you just feel, without expecting anything in return. Lifted beyond the bartering level and the love/hate cycles we see in many relationships.
Of course this is not easy, but it helps being notified og its existence now and then.

[OUTSIDER]

To me it proves that a deep love can develop innocently, and naturally, without $ex or money having anything to do with it.
But even more so, what really hits home with me, is the Loneliness aspect of the film....
Having lost my soul mate to an incurable terminal disease.

[gary13136]

It hasn't changed my attitude. My own attitude is best summed up in 1st Corinthians, Chapter 13. And especially verse 7, which, translated into modern English reads,"When you love someone you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him, always expect the best of him, and always stand your ground in defending him."

And for "him" you can always substitute "her".

[DMt.]

No...not really. It has been tremendously validating, though, to the position I'd already arrived at.

For a long time I was very puzzled by the words attributed to the Christ, "Resist not Evil". It seemed absurd; not to strive against the darker impulses, not to strive against our wickedness? What the hell?

But gradually I came to think that, in this dualistic world, even the best of us is so riven with conflicts and failings that we do well to strive instead for acceptance of ourselves as a whole, light and dark alike, and hopefully so to avoid the neurotic [or even psychotic] drive to Destroy Evil which has led us all, for so long, into yet further error.

Oskar is right to offer Eli his love, despite the evil fate in which s/he is drowning. What other creative response is there?

[gattoparde59]

I would not say that LTROI changed my attitude about love. As I have grown older I have grown more and more sentimental so in that sense my finding this story is part of a long term trend for me. Having found this story I must say that it has led me to think much more about love and I have gained some insight into this emotional compass that is trying, I think, to point me in the right direction.

If anything has changed, it is my attitude towards other things that I feel are unimportant as far as love is concerned.

[DMt.]

But even more so, what really hits home with me, is the Loneliness aspect of the film....
Having lost my soul mate to an incurable terminal disease.

That's a very hard fate indeed. There was a global survey, apparently, in which people all over the world were invited to hierarchise a list of awful contingencies, like nuclear war, or the collapse of the ecosphere, and all of them, in all societies, came a very poor second to the loss of a spouse.

I don't know how to offer any kind of comfort, but I do believe that love is non-local, higher than time and space.

[gattoparde59]

But even more so, what really hits home with me, is the Loneliness aspect of the film....
Having lost my soul mate to an incurable terminal disease.

Dmt reminded me, I am very sorry to hear that OUTSIDER.