On doomed romances.

It’s a warm but cloudy Saturday morning as I sit writing this. Shiberu Umbeyashi’s In the Mood for Love plays in the background and I’m left with this strange feeling. I close my eyes and try to piece it together, and it feels like spring is departing. The flowers that were in full bloom once are crippling away slowly, and the birds are mellow. Summer is arriving and the sun will soon be shining radiantly and people would be out, warm and happy. Am I scared to lose the spring and the beauty it brings? But summer is warm, and the sun is safe. Why do I feel this deep longing for the past then?

Most of us grew up with the stories of princesses and the prince charming. Or maybe, watching those cheesy Bollywood romances, the songs and the lights, the love and that sense of belonging. This notion of ‘happily ever after’, is something we’re all familiar with. It’s a comforting feeling, knowing that everything resolves itself in the end. But does it happen in real life too? Soulmates ending up together, society being in agreement of it all, and things falling into place. It must happen, at least sometimes. For the major part though, the reality is often disappointing. And there’s no solace in this truth. It is daunting and dis-comforting but ultimately, we learn to live with this uncertainty.

Movies and books have always been a place for me to go to during such periods of unrest. And the genre that I’ve come to recline in is ‘doomed romance’. Why you must ask, when the reality is already harsh, watch sad things. It’s a question I ask myself a lot too. The only explanation I end up with is, it’s comforting to me. To experience loss, longing, and beautiful failures through these works of art help me to come to terms with the oblivious. There’s often beauty in hope and what-ifs. ‘Maybe they would have been together forever, happy and content’, there’s beauty in this thought alone. ‘Ah, society failed them! But they were a hell of a team!’ This might not have been true but you’re left with this happy picture filled with endless possibilities. And there’s consolation in this thought. Through the years I’ve come across many such pieces of work, each beautiful and unique in its way but sharing this common theme of doomed endings.

In the mood for love (2000) – Wong Kar Wai

‘In the old days, if someone had a secret, they didn’t want to share... you know what they did? They went up a mountain, found a tree, carved a hole in it, and whispered the secret into the hole. Then they covered it with mud, and left the secret there forever.’

Su and Chow are neighbors, living in a rented apartment in British Hong Kong. Their respective spouses are always out working late-night shifts or away, overseas. It is the 1960s and their social lives are in for the scrutiny of people.

This movie is a frame-in-frame kind, both literally and figuratively. We, the audience look at their lives almost from ‘the society’s’ or the society around them- the neighbour’s perspective. We watch them go past each other, exchange formalities and gentle stares. Another theme of this movie is, repetitiveness, and that’s for most of Wong Kar-Wai’s works, be it Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, or In The Mood for Love. He shows the mundane-ness and recursiveness of our daily lives beautifully in his works. Through the repetitiveness of scenes and music, we get a reminder that time is slowly progressing.

Su and Chow are suspicious of their spouse’s relationship. They try to re-create their scenes of rendezvous. It is certainly painful for them and they avoid all attachments and dismiss any attractions, ‘we won’t be like them’, they constantly remind each other. But, ‘feelings can creep up just like that’. It just takes a moment of carelessness, and the string slips away and before you know you’re in a new strange territory, somewhere you feel lost, but home at the same time. You were not supposed to be here and maybe you’re alone, but you feel a kind of warmth in it.

Su and Chow bonded over the shared loss of their marriages. I feel there’s something special about sharing grief with someone or be it any emotion. You go through the same pain with that person, and when no one seems to understand it, you have this one person to fall back on. Boundaries loosen up and you reach a point of emotional intimacy with them. But what if the other person doesn’t reciprocate?

Su and Chow had something beautiful, but it ended eventually. Would things be different had they met before, or if they did things differently? These are some questions you're left to wonder about. But this is the beauty of doomed romances. It was so agonizingly beautiful just as it was. Their secrets are buried in the hole of a rusty old wall in Angkor Wat, forever.

‘He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.’

Time heals all wounds. And things get better eventually as life moves on. When I started this article, I thought of writing about all of my favourite movies in this genre. Then I scaled it down to five. After some thought, I decided to go with two, but when I started writing about my first, I realised that every movie has a certain atmosphere and a distinct feel to it. Be it the dying relationship in Blue Valentine or the contradictive belongingness in, Lost in Translation. Or the sheer beauty of Gaspar Noe’s films and the melodies in Turkish ones. Each romance takes a different path, to an ending or not so much of an ending, pain of all kinds. But all this is a part of life, and these movies skillfully reveal the profound beauty hidden within the tragedies that shape our existence.

Circa July 2021