Everyone has a movie that they can't get tired of watching. I have two of them on my list: Pulp Fiction and Like Crazy. The latter is less known and, if you know the story, you'd probably find it underwhelming: a couple striving to maintain a long distance relationship.
Despite the exquisite cinematography and the radiant chemistry between the actors which transcends a lack of dialogues, what I love about the movie is the piercingly heartbreaking ending displayed in an extremely minimalistic, subtle way: the couple finally reunited, found themselves in the shower together, and after replaying in their heads a mosaic of memories from their past, they looked at the person in front of their eyes, loosened the embrace, and the girl walked away.
It is an unexpected ending to some, knowing that the couple has endured longings for each other for years to finally be united. However, among the people I've talked to, those who have experienced long distance relationships seem to relate to the decision made by Anna and Jacob, the characters in the movie. One conversation I had with a friend who had studied Jung's psychoanalytic theory shined a light on why relationships, especially the long distance ones, don't work out the way we expect them to.
Some background: archetypes, according to Jung, are structural components of our psyches. One of the four components, anima/animus, is the feminine portion of a male's personality, or the masculine portion of a female's personality. Men and women tend to repress their anima/animus, and instead these split-off qualities form a complex that tends to be reflected on others. In other words, men and women see a part of themselves on others that they themselves have repressed, if they do see these lost qualities on another person, they tend to be attracted to him or her because this person makes them feel a sense of wholeness.
In the movie, Anna and Jacob have gone through long periods of time without seeing each other. What maintains their relationship is their perceived images about one another, with Anna becoming the object of projection of Jacob's desired qualities that he himself had lost, and vice versa. So eventually when they meet again, the reality unmasked and they see that the other is no longer the person who lives in their imagination.
Credits to: Justin Haver
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