Written by Sarah Khan | 13 February 2012
Posted in Culture - Film

Director Drake Doremus. Photography: Heather McCall

The Sundance Festival celebrates independent film-making, showcasing 200 films for exhibition from more than 9,000 submissions each year. In 2011, the prestigious Grand Jury Award for Best Film was awarded to Like Crazy, and it’s easy to see why. A romance but not a typical love story, it is devoid of cliché with an ending that is neither a typical ‘happily ever after’ nor palpably sad. Perhaps a category of happily tragic would fit, despite the oxymoron.

It's a bitter sweet romance, with a healthy dose of realism, depicting both the hopefulness and heartbreak of being in love. Beginning like any other romance, a couple of teenagers start a fledgling relationship, falling hopelessly and gloriously in love with each other in their final year of university in America. Anna (Felicity Jones) is from the UK and has a temporary visa allowing her to stay in the States. Temporarily blinded by her love for Jacob (Anton Yelchin), she violates her visa by over-staying the allocated time period. When she next attempts to enter the US, she is deported straight back to the UK, much to Jacob’s dismay.

And so begins a long distance relationship, fraught with misconstrued text messages and early morning/late night phone calls. The separation causes haphazard decision-making, showing that in reality love drives people to do ‘crazy’ things, not all of which may be pleasant or even explicable. The film looks at the boundaries of love and how a single flame is perhaps not enough to sustain a relationship. It also highlights the permanence of choices made; life does not have a repeat-afresh-with-the-benefit-of-hindsight button, sadly enough.

The film is directed exceptionally well by Drake Doremus, with each scene depicted  artistically with flare and originality. Uniquely, the film had no concrete script for the actors. Instead, they were given a complete back-story of the characters and a detailed outline of the storyline. The actors were then left to their own devices to spontaneously improvise the speech in each scene. The result? A fabulously realistic screenplay. By straying from the conventional set-up, a real sense of honesty is portrayed on screen by both Jones and Yelchin. The dialogue is laden with uncertainty and awkwardness, much like it would in real life. The realism theme is further heightened by the shaky cinematography –the film is captured with a handheld camera.

Like Crazy is a refreshing look at love and the concept of soulmates who are destined to be together. The protagonists are intelligent, focused, career-driven individuals, deeply in love with one another, separated by several thousand miles and an ocean. One begs the question why Jacob doesn’t simply come to the UK for his furniture business. Maybe it is his passion and commitment that attracts Anna in the first place. But are they meant for one another? Can the concept of ‘the one’ truly exist and if it does exist, are you wasting your life with anyone else? The film addresses these from the young lovers’ constantly evolving viewpoints.

The familiar romantic anecdote that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ is put on trial, with evidence that the old amorous wisdom is tragically not always true. An intellectual love-story with a realistic slant, adrift with emotions but not emotional, it shows love like you’ve never seen before: Like Crazy. 

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