Stardust

Got to watch Star­dust the other day. Well, Anj made me do it. haha.

I liked it a lot. There seems to be a dearth of good films the past few months. And this is one of the few good ones. I haven’t read the book so all the char­ac­ters were new to me and I didn’t know their back sto­ries and because of that I really didn’t antic­i­pate any­thing. The down­side is that I didn’t really know the sub­tle nuances that read­ing the book would have afforded me. But it was a sur­prise for exam­ple how the Sky Cap­tain (Shake­speare?) char­ac­ter turned out. And Michelle Pfeifer’s char­ac­ter was unex­pect­edly hilar­i­ous even as she was cun­ningly evil. The seven broth­ers were of course the film’s comic high­light and it was funny how they all killed each other (or tried to) but still ended up together in death. Death, as they say, is really the great equalizer.

In the end, the story, like all good sto­ries, was about love.

Here’s the great love speech by Yvaine (to Tristan):

“You know when I said I knew lit­tle about love? That wasn’t true. I know a lot about love. I’ve seen it, cen­turies and cen­turies of it, and it was the only thing that made watch­ing your world bear­able. All those wars. Pain, lies, hate… It made me want to turn away and never look down again. But when I see the way that mankind loves… You could search to the fur­thest reaches of the uni­verse and never find any­thing more beau­ti­ful. So yes, I know that love is uncon­di­tional. But I also know that it can be unpre­dictable, unex­pected, uncon­trol­lable, unbear­able and strangely easy to mis­take for loathing, and… What I’m try­ing to say, Tris­tan is… I think I love you. Is this love, Tris­tan? I never imag­ined I’d know it for myself. My heart… It feels like my chest can barely con­tain it. Like it’s try­ing to escape because it doesn’t belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I’d wish for noth­ing in exchange — no fits. No goods. No demon­stra­tions of devo­tion. Noth­ing but know­ing you loved me too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine.”

Some­times, we just make love more com­pli­cated than how it’s sup­posed to be. Maybe in the end, love is that: YOUR HEART, IN EXCHANGE FOR MINE. The sit­u­a­tions will change, it will be expe­ri­enced by pau­pers, and princes, and maid­ens and sales ladies, and bas­ket­ball play­ers and movie stars. But it’s really that: LOVE is YOUR HEART, IN EXCHANGE FOR MINE. Your heart, given to another person.

We hope in the end, that every­one expe­ri­ences that in their lives. At least once in their lifetime.

Until that day arrives, keep walking.